Charged Particle Motion in Time-Varying Electromagnetic Fields

Abstract

In this chapter we analyze the motion of charged particles in the presence of time-varying fields. Initially, in the two following sections, we consider a time-varying electric field and a constant magnetic field, both fields being spatially uniform. The assumption of a constant and spatially uniform B field is well justified if the externally applied magnetostatic field is much larger than the magnetic field associated with the time-varying E field. Also, the assumption of an electric field that is spatially uniform is valid if the charged particle cyclotron radius is much smaller than the scale length of the spatial variation of E. Both these requirements are assumed to hold in the analysis presented in sections 2 and 3. In section 4 we consider a time-varying magnetic field and the corresponding space-varying electric field.