Drift Wave Turbulence In Plasmas Research Articles

Dynamics of potential vorticity staircase evolution and step mergers in a reduced model of beta-plane turbulence

A two-field model of potential vorticity (PV) staircase structure and dynamics relevant to both beta-plane and drift-wave plasma turbulence is studied numerically and analytically. The model evolves averaged PV whose flux is both driven by and regulates, a potential enstrophy field, $\varepsilon$. The model employs a closure using a mixing length model. Its link to bistability, vital to staircase generation, is analyzed and verified by integrating the equations numerically. Long-time staircase evolution consistently manifests a pattern of meta-stable quasi-periodic configurations, lasting for hundreds of time units, yet interspersed with abrupt ($\Delta t\ll1$) mergers of adjacent steps in the staircase. The mergers occur at the staircase lattice defects where the pattern has not completely relaxed to a strictly periodic solution that can be obtained analytically. Other types of stationary solutions are solitons and kinks in the PV gradient and $\varepsilon$ - profiles. The waiting time between mergers increases strongly as the number of steps in the staircase decreases. This is because of an exponential decrease in inter-step coupling strength with growing spacing. The long-time staircase dynamics is shown numerically be determined by local interaction with adjacent steps. Mergers reveal themselves through the explosive growth of the turbulent PV-flux which, however, abruptly drops to its global constant value once the merger is completed.

Network approach to the pinning control of drift-wave turbulence.

Network of coupled oscillators has long been employed as an important approach to explore the complicated dynamics in spatially extended systems. Here we show how this approach can be used to the analysis of turbulence pinning control. Specifically, by use of a model of two-dimensional drift-wave plasma turbulence, we investigate how the performance of the turbulence control is influenced by the spatial distribution of the pinning strength. It is found that the dynamics of pinned turbulence can be well captured by a simple model of networked modes, based on which the dependence of the control performance on the pinning distribution can be analytically obtained. In particular, the model predicts that as the distribution of the pinning strength becomes more nonuniform, the performance of turbulence control will be gradually decreased. This theoretical prediction is in good agreement with the results of numerical simulations, including the sinusoidal and localized pinning distributions. Our studies provide a new viewpoint to the mechanism of mode couplings in drift-wave turbulence, as well as be constructive to the design of new schemes for controlling turbulence in realistic systems.

Regulating drift-wave plasma turbulence into spatiotemporal patterns by pinning coupling

Using the technique of pinning coupling in chaos control, we investigate how the two-dimensional drift-wave plasma turbulence described by the Hasegawa-Mima equation can be regulated into different spatiotemporal patterns. It is shown both analytically and numerically that, depending on the pattern structure of the target, the pinning strength necessary for regulating the turbulence could have a large variation. More specifically, with the increase of the wave number of the target, the critical pinning strength is found to be increased by a power-law scaling. Moreover, in both the transition and transient process of the pinning regulation, the modes of the turbulence are found to be suppressed in a hierarchical fashion, that is, by the sequence of mode wave number. The findings give insight into the dynamics of drift-wave turbulence, as well as indicative to the design of new control techniques for real-world turbulence.

Generation of zonal perturbations and transport barriers in plasmas

It is shown that drift wave plasma turbulence in the electromagnetic regime can significantly affect the zonal flow dynamics and drive zonal fields. A new interpretation of the effect of the zonal fields on the zonal flow stability is given as previous analytic predictions are shown to be inadequate for accurately describing the numerical results. The zonal flow/field excitation mechanism in the electromagnetic regime can provide a possible explanation for the observed correlation between transport barrier formation and low shear rational surfaces in the plasma.

Resistive drift-wave plasma turbulence and the realizable Markovian closure

The realizable Markovian closure (RMC) developed by Bowman et al. [Phys. Fluids B 5 (1993) 3558] is employed to study the Hasegawa-Wakatani model, a paradigm for resistive drift-wave turbulence. Turbulent transport, spectral properties, and energy-transfer directions are discussed. For second-order statistics, the closure predictions are in excellent agreement with direct numerical simulations. A marked depression of the hydrodynamic flux from its quasilinear value is well predicted by the RMC and is explained without reference to “coherent structures”.

Renormalization-group theory of plasma microturbulence.

The dynamical renormalization-group methods are applied to the gyrokinetic equation describing drift-wave turbulence in plasmas. As in both magnetohydrodynamic and neutral turbulence, small-scale fluctuations appear to act as effective dissipative processes on large-scale phenomena. A linear renormalized gyrokinetic equation is derived. No artificial forcing is introduced into the equations and all the renormalized corrections are expressed in terms of the fluctuating electric potential. The link with the quasilinear limit and the direct interaction approximation is investigated. Simple analytical expressions for the anomalous transport coefficients are derived by using the linear renormalized gyrokinetic equation. Examples show that both quasilinear and Bohm scalings can be recovered depending on the spectral amplitude of the electric potential fluctuations.