Nonlinear excitation of fine-radial-scale zonal structures by toroidal Alfven eigenmode
Abstract
The set of equations describing nonlinear evolution of a single toroidal Alfven eigenmode are derived, including both zero frequency zonal structure (ZFZS) generation and wave-particle phase space nonlinearities. The simplified case of neglecting wave-particle phase space nonlinearity is then investigated to focus on different roles of energetic particles and bulk plasmas on ZFZS generation. It is shown that energetic particles and bulk plasma play dominant roles in ZFZS generation in different nonlinear stages, and the corresponding processes are qualitatively different. Several properties of ZFZS generation, e.g., fine- vs. meso-scale, forced driven vs. spontaneous excitation, are clarified by the present analysis.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1612.03252,
title = {Nonlinear excitation of fine-radial-scale zonal structures by toroidal Alfven eigenmode},
author = {Zhiyong Qiu and Liu Chen and Fulvio Zonca},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.03252},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
13 pages. Submited to Nuclear Fusion as the FEC2016 special issue paper