Chaotic motion of charged particles in toroidal magnetic configurations.

We study the motion of a charged particle in a tokamak magnetic field and discuss its chaotic nature. Contrary to most of recent studies, we do not make any assumption on any constant of the motion and solve numerically the cyclotron gyration using Hamiltonian formalism. We take advantage of a symplectic integrator allowing us to make long-time simulations.

Control of Hamiltonian chaos as a possible tool to control anomalous transport in fusion plasmas.

It is shown that a relevant control of Hamiltonian chaos is possible through suitable small perturbations whose form can be explicitly computed. In particular, it is possible to control (reduce) the chaotic diffusion in the phase space of a Hamiltonian system with 1.5 degrees of freedom which models the diffusion of charged test particles in a turbulent electric field across the confining magnetic field in controlled thermonuclear fusion devices.