Bivariate incomplete-Bessel kernels for the first nonlinear Vlasov-Maxwell response

Abstract

The weakly nonlinear response of a homogeneous magnetised plasma is usually written as a double cyclotron-harmonic expansion. This representation is explicit, but the repeated use of the Jacobi-Anger expansion produces long sums of Bessel functions and nested resonance denominators. In the linear problem we recently obtained an alternative formulation by keeping the Larmor phase unexpanded and by evaluating the characteristic integral in terms of the newly introduced incomplete-Bessel function $G_μ(z,ψ)$. In this article we apply the same idea directly to the first nonlinear Vlasov-Maxwell equation. The nonlinear source contains the linear response of an inner mode. When this linear response is written in incomplete-Bessel form, the outer characteristic integral produces a bivariate orbit-resolvent $G_{μ,ν}^{(r)}(z,ψ;w,χ)$. This function emerges therefore as the natural orbit integral generated by the first nonlinear characteristic problem. We derive the nonlinear distribution function in terms of these bivariate functions, collect the identities needed for the current projection, recover an extension of the classical double-harmonic Liu-Tripathi formula by expansion, and indicate how the nonlinear susceptibility tensor is obtained from bivariate angular contractions.