Related papers: Symmetry breaking in MAST plasma turbulence due to…
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,…
The transport of heat out of tokamak plasmas by turbulence is the dominant mechanism limiting the performance of fusion reactors. Turbulence can be driven by the ion temperature gradient (ITG) and suppressed by toroidal sheared flows.…
Tokamak turbulence, driven by the ion-temperature gradient and occurring in the presence of flow shear, is investigated by means of local, ion-scale, electrostatic gyrokinetic simulations (with both kinetic ions and electrons) of the…
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 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…
Beam Emission Spectroscopy (BES) measurements of ion-scale density fluctuations in the MAST tokamak are used to show that the turbulence correlation time, the drift time associated with ion temperature or density gradients, the particle…
Based on a recent theory (Coppi, Nuclear Fusion, 42, 1, 2002) of spontaneous toroidal rotation in tokamaks (Lee et al, Phys Rev Lett, 91, 205003, 2003) and in astrophysical accretion disks, we propose that an analogous process could be at…
The Probability Distribution Function of plasma density fluctuations at the edge of fusion devices is known to be skewed and strongly non-Gaussian. The causes of this peculiar behaviour are, up to now, largely unexplored. On the other hand,…
Observations of ion-scale (k_y*rho_i <= 1) density turbulence of relative amplitude dn_e/n_e <= 0.2% are available on the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) using a 2D (8 radial x 4 poloidal channel) imaging Beam Emission Spectroscopy (BES)…
It is shown that in turbulent flows the distributed chaos with spontaneously broken translational space symmetry (homogeneity) has a stretched exponential spectrum $\exp-(k/k_{\beta})^{\beta }$ with $\beta =1/2$. Good agreement has been…
We investigate the effect of varying the ion temperature gradient (ITG) and toroidal equilibrium scale sheared flow on ion-scale turbulence in the outer core of MAST by means of local gyrokinetic simulations. We show that nonlinear…
Nonlinear symmetry breaking may occur in systems with two or more states whose linear dynamics displays certain symmetries, one of which is preferred nonlinearly. We have identified a regime of electron temperature gradient (ETG)…
This paper presents a complete theoretical framework for plasma turbulence and transport in tokamak plasmas. The fundamental scale separations present in plasma turbulence are codified as an asymptotic expansion in the ratio of the…
A local magnetic equilibrium solution is sought around the magnetic axis in order to identify the key parameters defining the magnetic-surface's up-down asymmetry in the core of tokamak plasmas. The asymmetry is found to be determined…
Recent gyrokinetic stability calculations have revealed that the spherical tokamak is susceptible to tearing parity instabilities with length scales of a few ion Larmor radii perpendicular to the magnetic field lines. Here we investigate…
Differential rotation is induced in tokamak plasmas when an underlying symmetry of the governing gyrokinetic-Maxwell system of equations is broken. One such symmetry-breaking mechanism is considered here: the turbulent acceleration of…
The competition between the drive and stabilization of plasma microinstabilities by sheared flow is investigated, focusing on the ion temperature gradient mode. Using a twisting mode representation in sheared slab geometry, the…
Starting from the assumption that saturation of plasma turbulence driven by temperature-gradient instabilities in fusion plasmas is achieved by a local energy cascade between a long-wavelength outer scale, where energy is injected into the…
We construct the low-frequency formulation of the turbulence characterizing the plasma in a Tokamak edge. Under rather natural assumptions we demonstrate that, even in the presence of poloidal magnetic fluctuations, it is possible to deal…
Plasma turbulence is the dominant transport mechanism for heat and particles in magnetized plasmas in linear devices and tokamaks, so the study of turbulence is important in limiting and controlling this transport. Linear devices provide an…