Related papers: The life-cycle of drift-wave turbulence driven by …
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…
The generation of large-scale zonal flows by small-scale electrostatic drift waves in electron temperature gradient(ETG) driven turbulence model is considered. The generation mechanism is based on the modulational instability of a finite…
A new strategy is presented to explain the creation and persistence of zonal flows widely observed in plasma edge turbulence. The core physics in the edge regime of the magnetic-fusion tokamaks can be described qualitatively by the…
Plasma turbulence described by the Hasegawa-Wakatani equations has been simulated numerically for different models and values of the adiabaticity parameter C. It is found that for low values of C turbulence remains isotropic, zonal flows…
Strongly driven ion-scale turbulence in tokamak plasmas is shown to be regulated by a new propagating zonal flow mode, the toroidal secondary mode, which is nonlinearly supported by the turbulence. The mode grows and propagates due to the…
We propose a quantitative model of ion temperature gradient driven turbulence in toroidal magnetized plasmas. In this model, the turbulence is regulated by zonal flows, i.e. mode saturation occurs by a zonal-flow-mediated energy cascade…
This paper gives a pedagogic review of the envelope formalism for excitation of zonal flows by nonlinear interactions of plasma drift waves or Rossby waves, described equivalently by the Hasegawa-Mima (HM) equation or the quasigeostrophic…
It is shown that magnetic islands generated by pressure-gradient-driven turbulence are common across a wide range of conditions. The interaction among turbulence, magnetic island and other large scale structures (the zonal flow and the…
The consequences of discrete particle noise for a system possessing a possibly unstable collective mode are discussed. It is argued that a zonostrophic instability (of homogeneous turbulence to the formation of zonal flows) occurs just…
A detailed study of the Charney-Hasegawa-Mima model and its extensions is presented. These simple nonlinear partial differential equations suggested for both Rossby waves in the atmosphere and also drift waves in a magnetically-confined…
Energy dynamics calculations in a 3D fluid simulation of drift wave turbulence in the linear Large Plasma Device (LAPD) [W. Gekelman et al., Rev. Sci. Inst. 62, 2875 (1991)] illuminate processes that drive and dissipate the turbulence.…
Turbulence driven zonal flows play an important role in fusion devices since they improve plasma confinement by limiting the level of anomalous transport. Current theories mostly focus on flow excitation but do not self-consistently…
In geophysical and plasma contexts, zonal flows are well known to arise out of turbulence. We elucidate the transition from statistically homogeneous turbulence without zonal flows to statistically inhomogeneous turbulence with steady zonal…
In many plasma systems, introducing a small background shear flow is enough to stabilize the system linearly. The nonlinear dynamics are much less sensitive to sheared flows than the average linear growthrates, and very small amplitude…
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…
We present a theory of the nonlinear growth of zonal flows in magnetized plasma turbulence, by the mechanism of secondary instability. The theory is derived for general magnetic geometry, and is thus applicable to both tokamaks and…
Zonal modes are central to magnetic confinement because their radial shears regulate turbulence and transport. While the generation of these flows is well understood, the mechanisms limiting their persistence in collisionless regimes remain…
In this paper, we find a new large scale instability displayed by a stratified rotating flow in forced turbu- lence. The turbulence is generated by a small scale external force at low Reynolds number. The theory is built on the rigorous…
We present numerical simulations of fully nonlinear drift wave-zonal flow (DW-ZF) turbulence systems in a nonuniform magnetoplasma. In our model, the drift wave (DW) dynamics is pseudo-three-dimensional (pseudo-3D) and accounts for…
In this paper, we find a new large scale instability displayed by a rotating flow in forced turbulence. The turbulence is generated by a small scale external force at low Reynolds number. The theory is built on the rigorous asymptotic…