Lie Algebraic Treatment of Linear and Nonlinear Beam Dynamics

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a summary of new methods, employing Lie algebraic tools, for characterizing beam dynamics in charged-particle optical systems. These methods are applicable to accelerator design, charged-particle beam transport, electron microscopes, and also light optics. The new methods represent the action of each separate element of a compound optical system, including all departures from paraxial optics, by a certain operator. The operators for the various elements can then be concatenated, following well-defined rules, to obtain a resultant operator that characterizes the entire system. This paper deals mostly with accelerator design and charged-particle beam transport. The application of Lie algebraic methods to light optics and electron microscopes is described elsewhere (1, see also 44). To keep its scope within reasonable bounds, they restrict their treatment of accelerator design and charged-particle beam transport primarily to the use of Lie algebraic methods for the description of particle orbits in terms of transfer maps. There are other Lie algebraic or related approaches to accelerator problems that the reader may find of interest (2). For a general discussion of linear and nonlinear problems in accelerator physics see (3).