A Study of the Coefficient a2 in the Extended Nonlinear Guiding Center Theory

Abstract

The diffusion mechanism of charged particles is one of the very im- portant problems in astrophysics. Recently, Matthaeus et al. (2003) developed a nonlinear guiding center theory (NLGC) of the perpendicular diffusion of en- ergetic charged particles with the parallel diffusion coefficient as an input. This theory agrees with the results of numerical simulations very well. In addition, Qin (2007) developed a nonlinear parallel diffusion theory (NLPA) following the idea of NLGC. Combining the NLGC with the NLPA, a new theory, NLGC-E was developed to solve the parallel and perpendicular diffusion coefficients simultaneously. In the NLGC theory, there is a coefficient a2 which is selected to be 1/3 for the best agreement with the results of numerical simulations. In this work we tried the different values of a2 for the NLGC-E theory to determine the optimal value which fits best the results of numerical simulations.