Dynamics of charged particles in spatially chaotic magnetic fields

The spatial topology of magnetic field lines can be chaotic for fields generated by simple current configurations. This is illustrated for a system consisting of a circular current loop and a straight current wire. An asymmetric configuration of the current system leads to three-dimensional spatially chaotic magnetic fields. The motion of charged particles in these fields is not necessarily chaotic and exhibits intriguing dynamical properties. Particles having initial velocities closely aligned with the direction of the local magnetic field are likely to follow chaotic orbits in phase space. Other particles follow coherent and periodic orbits; these orbits being the same as in the symmetric current configuration for which the field lines are not chaotic. An important feature of particles with chaotic motion is that they undergo spatial transport across magnetic field lines. The cross-field diffusion is of interest in a variety of magnetized plasmas including laboratory and astrophysical plasmas.