Related papers: Dimits transition in three-dimensional ion-tempera…
The saturated state of turbulence driven by the ion-temperature-gradient instability is investigated using a two-dimensional long-wavelength fluid model that describes the perturbed electrostatic potential and perturbed ion temperature in a…
The transition between turbulent and zonal flow dominated states is investigated by varying the ion temperature gradient in nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations. Independent gradient scans reveal three distinct regimes: a turbulent regime at…
The tertiary instability is believed to be important for governing magnetised plasma turbulence under conditions of strong zonal flow generation, near marginal stability. In this work, we investigate its role for a collisionless strongly…
The Dimits shift, an upshift in the onset of turbulence from the linear instability threshold, caused by self-generated zonal flows, can greatly enhance the performance of magnetic confinement plasma devices. Except in simple cases, using…
The Dimits shift is the shift between the threshold of the drift-wave primary instability and the actual onset of turbulent transport in magnetized plasma. It is generally attributed to the suppression of turbulence by zonal flows, but…
This study employs gyrokinetic simulations to investigate ion temperature gradient (ITG) turbulence in realistic fusion plasmas featuring reverse magnetic shear. Negative magnetic shear is found to suppress the ITG instability due to the…
We study a quasi-two-dimensional electrostatic drift kinetic system as a model for near-marginal ion temperature gradient (ITG) driven turbulence. A proof is given of the nonlinear stability of this system under conditions of linear…
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…
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…
This manuscript has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Fluids, see https://journals.aps.org/prfluids/accepted/d5074S28J6b11905012b7cb06505e8f2149dd5f20. This work investigates the mechanisms that underlie transitions to…
Tertiary modes in electrostatic drift-wave turbulence are localized near extrema of the zonal velocity $U(x)$ with respect to the radial coordinate $x$. We argue that these modes can be described as quantum harmonic oscillators with complex…
The two-dimensional Terry-Horton equation is shown to exhibit the Dimits shift when suitably modified to capture both the nonlinear enhancement of zonal/drift-wave interactions and the existence of residual Rosenbluth-Hinton states. This…
The role of parallel ion motion for zonal flow generation in ion-temperature-gradient (ITG) mode turbulence is investigated with focus on the effects of acoustic modes and toroidicity on the zonal flow. One possible reason for the weak…
We consider the liquid-vapor type phase transition for fluids confined within spatially periodic external fields. For a fluid in d=3 dimensions, the periodic field induces an additional phase, characterized by large density modulations…
Microscale turbulence drives not only particle and heat transport but also energy exchange between different particle species. Previous local gyrokinetic studies have shown that turbulent energy exchange can exceed collisional exchange in…
We analyse the thermodynamic properties of a generalised Dicke model, i.e. a collection of three-level systems interacting with two bosonic modes. We show that at finite temperatures the system undergoes first-order phase transitions only,…
Turbulence in three dimensions ($3$D) supports vortex stretching that has long been known to accomplish energy transfer to small scales. Moreover, net energy transfer from large-scale, forced, unstable flow-gradients to smaller scales is…
By means of three dimensional high-resolution hybrid simulations we study the properties of the magnetic field spectral anisotropies near and beyond ion kinetic scales. By using both a Fourier analysis and a local analysis based on…
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…
Understanding the interaction mechanisms between large-scale magnetohydrodynamic instabilities and small-scale drift-wave microturbulence is essential for predicting and optimizing the performance of magnetic confinement based fusion energy…