English

The ponderomotive Lorentz force

Dynamical Systems 2020-02-25 v2 Mathematical Physics Classical Analysis and ODEs math.MP

Abstract

This paper describes a curious phenomenon: a particle in a rapidly varying potential is subject to an effective magnetic-like force. This force is in addition to the well-known ponderomotive force, but it has not been shown to exist before except for the linear case of a rapidly rotating quadratic saddle potential. We show that this is a universal phenomenon: the magnetic-like force arises generically in potential force fields with rapid periodic time dependence, including but not limited to rotational dependence.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.04970,
  title  = {The ponderomotive Lorentz force},
  author = {Graham Cox and Mark Levi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.04970},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

15 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:48:30.637Z