From period to quasiperiod to chaos: A continuous spectrum of orbits of charged particles trapped in a dipole magnetic field
Yuxin Xie, Siming Liu
Abstract
Via evaluation of the Lyapunov exponent, we report the discovery of three prominent sets of phase space regimes of quasiperiodic orbits of charged particles trapped in a dipole magnetic field. Besides the low energy regime that has been studied extensively and covers more than ∼10% in each dimension of the phase space of trapped orbits, there are two sets of high energy regimes, the largest of which covers more than ∼4% in each dimension of the phase space of trapped orbits. Particles in these high-energy orbits may be observed in space and be realized in plasma experiments on the earth.
Topics & Concepts
PhysicsCharged particlePhase spaceMagnetic fieldDipoleMagnetic dipoleQuasiperiodic functionContinuous spectrumSpace (punctuation)Energy spectrumPhase (matter)Atomic physicsDimension (graph theory)Quantum electrodynamicsField (mathematics)Period (music)Spectrum (functional analysis)Magnetic energyComputational physicsEnergy (signal processing)PlasmaParticle (ecology)Quantum chaos and dynamical systemsDust and Plasma Wave PhenomenaPulsars and Gravitational Waves Research