Characterizing time intermittency in non-diffusive fast ion transport through plasma turbulence

Abstract

Turbulent fast ion transport has been investigated in astrophisycal, laboratory and fusion plasmas. When gyro- and drift-averaging across plasma structures manifest as non-markovian and non-local effects, this results in generally non-diffusive transport. The intermittency of the formation of these plasma structures, such as blobs, can potentially be reflected in the transport of the fast ions as well. In the TORPEX basic plasma device, a toroidal beam of suprathermal Li-6 ions is injected into electrostatic plasma turbulence. Conditional sampling techniques confirm turbulent E × B-drifts as physical driving mechanism of radial fast ion transport, which features sub-, super- or quasi-diffusive regimes depending on the fast ion energy and propagation time. To address the question of how far local intermittency is associated with each regime, we analyze characteristics of time-intermittency on an extensive set of local fast ion time-series across all observed regimes. Modeling the time-average fast ion profiles as the result of a meandering smaller instantaneous beam allows us to predict the skewness of such time-series based on their time-average. Comparisons with the skewness of simple two-valued time-series can yield relative indications towards certain transport regimes in our specific system, based on the differences in the size of the instantaneous fast ion beam.