Turbulence analysis of an experimental flux rope plasma
Abstract
We have previously generated elongated Taylor double-helix flux rope plasmas in the SSX MHD wind tunnel. These plasmas are remarkable in their rapid relaxation (about one Alfv\'en time) and their description by simple analytical Taylor force-free theory despite their high plasma beta and high internal flow speeds. We report on the turbulent features observed in these plasmas including frequency spectra, autocorrelation function, and probability distribution functions of increments. We discuss here the possibility that the turbulence facilitating access to the final state supports coherent structures and intermittency revealed by non-Gaussian signatures in the statistics. Comparisons to a Hall-MHD simulation of the SSX MHD wind tunnel show similarity in several statistical measures.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1310.2228,
title = {Turbulence analysis of an experimental flux rope plasma},
author = {D. A. Schaffner and V. S. Lukin and A. Wan and M. R. Brown},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1310.2228},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
20 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Plasma Physics Controlled Fusion for Special Issue on Flux Ropes