S–PARMOS – a method for simulating single charged particle motion in external magnetic and electric fields

Abstract

In this paper we present a new software package for computational simulation of single particle motion in the presence of static external electric and magnetic fields. This seemingly simple problem is in fact very complicated one. Namely, while analytic formulations of this problem are unambiguous, it is very difficult to predict even qualitatively a charged particle trajectory for an arbitrary combination of field parameters, except in simplified cases. Instead, one might perform a single particle motion simulation. Our software package represents a unique tool for this problem. A special new feature of our approach is constructing the instant Larmor Center Trajectory. For the case of slowly changing fields, the Larmor center trajectory reduces to the less general guiding center trajectory approximation. The possibilities for further investigating these two approaches by using our software might be of great interest for both educational and engineering purposes, especially in the areas of gaseous electronics and laboratory, fusion and space plasmas.