Leapfrog methods for relativistic charged-particle dynamics

Abstract: A basic leapfrog integrator and its energy-preserving and variational / symplectic variants are proposed and studied for the numerical integration of the equations of motion of relativistic charged particles in an electromagnetic field. The methods are based on a four-dimensional formulation of the equations of motion. Structure-preserving properties of the numerical methods are analysed, in particular conservation and long-time near-conservation of energy and mass shell as well as preservation of volume in phase space. In the non-relativistic limit, the considered methods reduce to the Boris algorithm for non-relativistic charged-particle dynamics and its energy-preserving and variational / symplectic variants.