Beat Hamiltonians and generalized ponderomotive forces in hot magnetized plasma

Abstract

A novel approach to the theory of nonlinear mode coupling in hot magnetized plasma is presented. The formulation retains the conceptual simplicity of the familiar ponderomotive-scalar-potential method, but removes the approximations. The essence of the approach is a canonical transformation of the single-particle Hamiltonian, designed to eliminate those interaction terms which are linear in the fields. The new entity (the ‘oscillation centre’) then has no first-order uttering motion, and generalized ponderomotive forces appear as nonlinear terms in the transformed Hamiltonian. This viewpoint is applied to derive a compact symmetric formula for the general three-wave coupling coefficient in hot uniform magnetized plasma, and to extend the conventional ponderomotive-scalar-potential method to the domain of strongly magnetized plasma.