Related papers: Bistable turbulence in strongly magnetised plasmas…
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…
Magnetised plasma turbulence can have a multiscale character: instabilities driven by mean temperature gradients drive turbulence at the disparate scales of the ion and the electron gyroradii. Simulations of multiscale turbulence, using…
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 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…
Gyrokinetics is a rich and rewarding playground to study some of the mysteries of modern physics. In this thesis I present work, motivated by the quest for fusion energy, which seeks to uncover some of the inner workings of turbulence in…
The scaling of turbulent heat flux with respect to electrostatic potential is examined in the framework of a reduced ($4$D) kinetic system describing electrostatic turbulence in magnetized plasmas excited by the ion temperature gradient…
A linearly unstable, sinusoidal $E \times B$ shear flow is examined in the gyrokinetic framework in both the linear and nonlinear regimes. In the linear regime, it is shown that the eigenmode spectrum is nearly identical to hydrodynamic…
When turbulent structures split more frequently before they decay, persistent turbulence forms in neutral fluid shear flows. Whether this concept can be extended to linear magnetized plasmas is investigated here and compared to the behavior…
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…
A case study in bifurcation and stability analysis is presented, in which reduced dynamical system modelling yields substantial new global and predictive information about the behaviour of a complex system. The first smooth pathway, free of…
The structural properties of an economical model for a confined plasma turbulence governor are investigated through bifurcation and stability analyses. A close relationship is demonstrated between the underlying bifurcation framework of the…
In an inhomogeneous magnetised plasma the transport of energy and particles perpendicular to the magnetic field is in general mainly caused by quasi two-dimensional turbulent fluid mixing. The physics of turbulence and structure formation…
The properties of low-frequency convective fluctuations and transport are investigated for the boundary region of magnetized plasmas. We employ a two-dimensional fluid model for the evolution of the global plasma quantities in a geometry…
Over a century of research into the origin of turbulence in wallbounded shear flows has resulted in a puzzling picture in which turbulence appears in a variety of different states competing with laminar background flow. At slightly higher…
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…
Previous limiter-biasing experiments on the Texas Helimak, a simple magnetized torus, have been inconclusive on the effect of flow shear on turbulence levels. To investigate this, the first gyrokinetic simulations of limiter biasing in the…
When turbulent flow is laden with negatively buoyant particles, their mean distribution over the direction of gravity can induce stable density gradients that penalize turbulent fluctuations. This effect is studied numerically for…
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…
Magnetized plasmas with equilibrium density gradients support drift-wave turbulence, which is often regulated by self-generated zonal flows. In this work, we experimentally examine the effect of increasing the magnetic field on turbulence…
Turbulent mixing layers in nature are often characterized by the presence of a mean shear and an unstable buoyancy gradient between two streams of different velocity. Depending on the relative strength of shear versus buoyancy, either the…