Beatification: Flattening the Poisson Bracket for Two-Dimensional Fluid and Plasma Theories

A perturbative method called beatification is presented for a class of two-dimensional fluid and plasma theories. The Hamiltonian systems considered, namely the Euler, Vlasov-Poisson, Hasegawa-Mima, and modified Hasegawa-Mima equations, are naturally described in terms of noncanonical variables. The beatification procedure amounts to finding the correct transformation that removes the explicit variable dependence from a noncanonical Poisson bracket and replaces it with a fixed dependence on a chosen state in phase space. As such, beatification is a major step toward casting the Hamiltonian system in its canonical form, thus enabling or facilitating the use of analytical and numerical techniques that require or favor a representation in terms of canonical, or beatified, Hamiltonian variables.