https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2016-70425-9
Regular Article
Drift velocity of charged particles in magnetic fields and its relation to the direction of the source current
Department of Mechanics, Royal Institute of
Technology (KTH), 10044
Stockholm,
Sweden
a
e-mail: hanno@mech.kth.se
Received:
1
July
2016
Received in final form:
5
August
2016
Published online:
13
October
2016
Integrable motion of charged particles in magnetic fields produced by stationary current distributions is investigated. We treat motion in the magnetic field from an infinite flat current sheet, a Harris current sheath, an infinite rectilinear current, and a dipole in its equatorial plane. We find that positively charged particles as a rule will drift in the same direction as the current that is the source of the magnetic field in question. The conclusion is that charged particles moving under the influence of current distributions tend to enhance the current and that this indicates current self-amplification.
Key words: Plasma Physics
© The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
