Velocity width of the resonant domain in wave-particle interaction

Abstract

Wave-particle interaction is a ubiquitous physical mechanism exhibiting locality in velocity space. A single-wave Hamiltonian provides a rich model by which to study the self-consistent interaction between one electrostatic wave and N quasiresonant particles. For the simplest nonintegrable Hamiltonian coupling two particles to one wave, we analytically derive the particle velocity borders separating quasi-integrable motions from chaotic ones. These estimates are fully retrieved through computation of the largest Lyapunov exponent. For the large-N particle self-consistent case, we numerically investigate the localization of stochasticity in velocity space and test a qualitative estimate of the borders of chaos.