Role of secondary long wavelength structures in the saturation of electron temperature gradient driven turbulence

Abstract

The dynamics of secondary long wavelength structures (LWSs) in electron temperature gradient (ETG) driven turbulence are investigated by performing gyrofluid simulations and modeling analyses in a slab geometry with an emphasis of the underlying nonlinear interaction processes. It is shown that the back-reaction of the secondary LWS on the ambient fluctuations essentially contributes to saturating ETG instability and limiting the electron transport. The LWS is nonlinearly generated mainly through the beating of the most unstable ETG modes, even a weak modulation instability. The back-reaction is identified as the enhanced stabilization of the ETG modes due to the streamer-type feature of the LWS, which dominantly produces a local poloidal mode coupling among unstable and highly damped spectral components to form a global mode, besides the suppression effect of the LWS due to the radial shearing decorrelation and/or the radial mode coupling. Finally, the correspondence between the LWS in the slab model and the quasimode observed in toroidal ETG simulation [Z. Lin et al., Phys. Plasmas 12, 056125 (2005)] and the importance of the nonlinear mode coupling in the multiscale turbulence interaction are discussed.