Symmetric and symplectic methods for gyrocenter dynamics in time-independent magnetic fields

Abstract

We apply a second-order symmetric Runge–Kutta method and a second-order symplectic Runge–Kutta method directly to the gyrocenter dynamics which can be expressed as a noncanonical Hamiltonian system. The numerical simulation results show the overwhelming superiorities of the two methods over a higher order nonsymmetric nonsymplectic Runge–Kutta method in long-term numerical accuracy and near energy conservation. Furthermore, they are much faster than the midpoint rule applied to the canonicalized system to reach given precision.