Hamiltonian reductions in plasma physics about intrinsic gyrokinetics
Réductions hamiltoniennes en physique des plasmas autour de la gyrocinétique intrinsèque
Résumé
Gyrokinetics is a key model for plasma micro-turbulence, commonly used for fusion plasmas or small-scale astrophysical turbulence, for instance. The model still suffers from several issues, which could imply to reconsider the equations. This thesis dissertation clarifies three of them. First, one of the coordinates caused questions, both from a physical and from a mathematical point of view; a suitable constrained coordinate is introduced, which removes the issues from the theory and explains the intrinsic structures underlying the questions. Second, the perturbative coordinate transformation for gyrokinetics was computed only at lowest orders; explicit induction relations are obtained to go arbitrary order in the expansion. Third, the introduction of the coupling between the plasma and the electromagnetic field was not completely satisfactory; using the Hamiltonian structure of the dynamics, it is implemented in a more appropriate way, with strong consequences on the gyrokinetic equations, especially about their Hamiltonian structure. In order to address these three main points, several other results are obtained, for instance about the origin of the guiding-center adiabatic invariant, about a very efficient minimal guiding-center transformation, or about an intermediate Hamiltonian model between Vlasov-Maxwell and gyrokinetics, where the characteristics include both the slow guiding-center dynamics and the fast gyro-angle dynamics. In addition, various reduction methods are used, introduced or developed, e.g. a Lie-transform of the equations of motion, a litfing method to transfer particle reductions to the corresponding Hamiltonian field dynamics, or a truncation method related both to Dirac's theory of constraints and to projections onto Lie-subalgebras. Besides gyrokinetics, this is useful to clarify other Hamiltonian reductions in plasma physics, for instance for incompressible or electrostatic dynamics, for magnetohydrodynamics, or for fluid closures including moments of the Vlasov density of order two.