Spectrum of Subcritical Turbulence in an Inhomogeneous Plasma

Abstract

A spectrum of fully developed turbulence via subcritical excitation in an inhomogeneous plasma is obtained. The dressed-test-mode analysis is developed, in which a dielectric tensor containing renormalized transfer rates is solved. The energy spectrum of the form E ( k ⊥ )∝ G 0 k ⊥ -3 is obtained in the energy-containing region. ( G 0 denotes the driving, which is the product of the gradients of plasma pressure and magnetic field.) Turbulent kinetic energy, W ∝ G 0 2 , and transport coefficient, χ T ∝ G 0 3/2 , are found to be nonlinear functions of G 0 , which presents a typical example of nonlinear, nonequilibrium transport.