Subspace Approximations to the Focused Transport Equation of Energetic Particles, I. The Standard Form

Abstract: The Fokker-Planck equation describing the transport of energetic particles interacting with turbulence is difficult to solve analytically. Numerical solutions are of course possible but they are not always useful for applications. In the past a subspace approximation was proposed which allows to compute important quantities such as the characteristic function as well as certain expectation values. This previous approach was applied to solve the one-dimensional Fokker-Planck equation which contains only a pitch-angle scattering term. In the current paper we extend this approach in order to solve the Fokker-Planck equation with a focusing term. We employ two- and three-dimensional subspace approximations to achieve a pure analytical description of particle transport. Additionally, we show that with higher dimensions, the subspace method can be used as a hybrid analytical-numerical method which produces an accurate approximation. Although the latter approach does not lead to analytical results, it is much faster compared to pure numerical solutions of the considered transport equation.