I'm interesting in numerically simulating (with my own code, not an off-the-shelf package) the motion of a single electrically charged particle in a magnetic field. The field will vary in time and space but probably not fast compared to the cyclotron frequency or the Larmor radius.There are many well known methods for integrating equations of motion for particles in fields. But the force due to the magnetic field has some special properties such as not changing the kinetic energy of the particle. Are there some numerical procedures that are better adapted to this special case eg. that will give a more accurate simulation and better conserve adiabatic invariants (when they should be conserved)?
Numerical simulation of particle in magnetic field
electromagnetism;simulation;numerics
I believe what you are looking for is a sympletic method; see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symplectic_integratorThey are designed to conserve energy exactly; however by trading up for accuracy one area, your simulation will have greater errors in other quantities (i.e. position as a function of time) compared to your usual Runge-Kutta methods.  