Influence of numerical schemes on statistical properties of computed charged particle trajectories in turbulent electromagnetic fields

A class of numerical schemes is developed for the study of charged particle transport in complex stationary electromagnetic fields and tested for fields obtained from a numerical solution of the magneto-hydrodynamic equation. The performances of these schemes are evaluated by analyzing the conservation of energy and the statistical properties of the trajectories. Energy conservation is affected by the interpolation technique used to estimate the field value at the particle position. However, the particle transport properties are more robust, except in the limit of low energy when a significant fraction of the particles are trapped.