Related papers: Zonal flow generation in ion temperature gradient …
Excitation of zonal flow by the modulational instability in the presence of mean shear flow is considered. It is shown that the small amplitude mean flow favours the modulational instability, increasing the growth rate, whereas sufficiently…
Zonal flows and turbulence spreading play important roles in magnetic fusion plasma confinement, yet their coupling mechanisms remain elusive. Using global nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations, we show that turbulence spreading transports…
In the complex 3D magnetic fields of stellarators, ion-temperature-gradient turbulence is shown to have two distinct saturation regimes, as revealed by petascale numerical simulations, and explained by a simple turbulence theory. The first…
Through a systematically developed theory, we demonstrate that the motion of instanton identified in [Y. Z. Zhang, Z. Y. Liu, T. Xie, S. M. Mahajan, and J. Liu, Physics of Plasmas 24, 122304 (2017)] is highly correlated to the intermittent…
Nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations have been conducted to investigate turbulent transport in tokamak plasmas with rotational shear. At sufficiently large flow shears, linear instabilities are suppressed, but transiently growing modes drive…
The properties of the edge ion-scale turbulence are studied using the beam emission spectroscopy (BES) diagnostic on MAST. Evidence of the formation of large-scale high-amplitude coherent structures, filamentary density blobs and holes,…
In this paper a conservation equation is derived for the radially dependent entropy in toroidal geometry using the local approximation of the gyro-kinetic framework. This equation naturally leads to an operative definition for the…
(Shortened) Thermal instability of partially ionized plasma is investigated by linear perturbation analysis. According to the previous studies under the one fluid approach, the thermal instability is suppressed due to the magnetic pressure.…
In electrostatic simulations of MAST plasma at electron-gyroradius scales, using the local flux-tube gyrokinetic code GS2 with adiabatic ions, we find that the long-time saturated electron heat flux (the level most relevant to energy…
Using the averaged magnetic drift model and a first-order finite Larmor radius (FLR) expansion, the eigenvalue equation for the ion temperature gradient (ITG) mode in tokamak plasmas is reduced to a Schr\"odinger-type differential equation.…
A remarkable phenomenon in turbulent flows is the spontaneous emergence of coherent large spatial scale zonal jets. Geophysical examples of this phenomenon include the Jovian banded winds and the Earth's polar front jet. In this work a…
We have extended our study of the competition between the drive and stabilization of plasma microinstabilities by sheared flow to include electromagnetic effects at low plasma $\beta$ (the ratio of plasma to magnetic pressure). The extended…
We use a heuristic fluid model to predict the dependence of the cutoff wave number for the short-wavelength ion temperature gradient (SWITG) mode on ion density gradient, ion temperature gradient (ITG) and ion-electron temperature ratio. In…
The work presented here focuses on the role of zonal flows in the self-sustenance of gravito-turbulence in accretion discs. The numerical analysis is conducted using a bespoke pseudo-spectral code in fully compressible, non-linear…
In this manuscript, eigenvalues of the Electron Temperature Gradient (ETG) modes and Ion Temperature Gradient (ITG) modes are determined numerically using Hermite and Sinc differentiation matrices based methods. It is shown that these…
Zonal flows are well known to arise spontaneously out of turbulence. We show that for statistically averaged equations of the stochastically forced generalized Hasegawa-Mima model, steady-state zonal flows and inhomogeneous turbulence fit…
This is a review of the theory of the modulational instability in idealised fluid models of strongly magnetised plasmas and reduced models of geophysical fluid dynamics, particularly the role it plays in the formation of zonal flows. The…
In this paper, we investigate the effects of ion-scale turbulence-generated currents on the local safety factor profile under conditions of low magnetic shear and proximity to rational surfaces, relevant to Internal Transport Barrier (ITB)…
Microinstabilities drive turbulent fluctuations in inhomogeneous, magnetized plasmas. In the context of magnetic confinement fusion devices, this leads to an enhanced transport of particles, momentum, and energy, thereby degrading…
Fundamental Lagrangian, frozen-in and topological invariants can be useful to explain systematic connections between plasma parameters. At high plasma temperature the dissipation is small and the robust invariances are manifested. We invoke…