Paper detail

Gyro-gauge-independent formulation of the guiding-center reduction to arbitrary order in the Larmor radius

The guiding-center reduction is studied using gyro-gauge-independent coordinates. The Lagrangian 1-form of charged particle dynamics is Lie transformed without introducing a gyro-gauge, but using directly the unit vector of the component of the velocity perpendicular to the magnetic field as the coordinate corresponding to Larmor gyration. The reduction is shown to provide a maximal reduction for the Lagrangian and to work to all orders in the Larmor radius, following exactly the same procedure as when working with the standard gauge-dependent coordinate. The gauge-dependence is removed from the coordinate system by using a constrained variable for the gyro-angle. The closed 1-form d teta is replaced by a more general non-closed 1-form, which is equal to d theta in the gauge-dependent case. The gauge vector is replaced by a more general connection in the definition of the gradient, which behaves as a covariant derivative, in perfect agreement with the circle-bundle picture. This explains some results of previous works, whose gauge-independent expressions did not correspond to a gauge fixing but indeed correspond to a connection fixing. In addition, some general results are obtained for the guiding-center reduction. The expansion is polynomial in the cotangent of the pitch-angle as an effect of the structure of the Lagrangian, preserved by Lie derivatives. The induction for the reduction is shown to rely on the inversion of a matrix which is the same for all orders higher than three. It is inverted and explicit induction relations are obtained to go to arbitrary order in the perturbation expansion. The Hamiltonian and symplectic representations of the guiding-center reduction are recovered, but conditions for the symplectic representation at each order are emphasized.