Turbulence and structure formation in complex plasmas and fluids

The formation and evolution of nonlinear and turbulent dynamical structures in two-dimensional complex plasmas and fluids is explored by means of generalised (drift) fluid simulations. Recent numerical results on turbulence in dusty magnetised plasmas, strongly coupled fluids, semi-classical ("quantum") plasmas and in rotating quantum fluids are reviewed and discussed

Flux surface shaping effects on tokamak edge turbulence and flows

Shaping of magnetic flux surfaces is found to have a strong impact on turbulence and transport in tokamak edge plasmas. A series of axisymmetric equilibria with varying elongation and triangularity, and a divertor configuration are implemented into a computational gyrofluid turbulence model. The mechanisms of shaping effects on turbulence and flows are identified. Transport is mainly reduced by local magnetic shearing and an enhancement of zonal shear flows induced by elongation and X-point shaping.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures. Submitted to Physics of Plasma

The collisional drift wave instability in steep density gradient regimes

The collisional drift wave instability in a straight magnetic field configuration is studied within a full-F gyro-fluid model, which relaxes the Oberbeck-Boussinesq (OB) approximation. Accordingly, we focus our study on steep background density gradients. In this regime we report on corrections by factors of order one to the eigenvalue analysis of former OB approximated approaches as well as on spatially localised eigenfunctions, that contrast strongly with their OB approximated equivalent. Remarkably, non-modal phenomena arise for large density inhomogeneities and for all collisionalities. As a result, we find initial decay and non-modal growth of the free energy and radially localised and sheared growth patterns. The latter non-modal effect sustains even in the nonlinear regime in the form of radially localised turbulence or zonal flow amplitudes.Comment: accepted at Nuclear Fusio

TIFF: Gyrofluid Turbulence in Full-f and Full-k

A model and code (TIFF) for isothermal gyrofluid computation of quasi-two-dimensional interchange and drift wave turbulence in magnetized plasmas with arbitrary fluctuation amplitudes (full-f) and arbitrary polarization wavelengths (full-k) is introduced. The model reduces to the paradigmatic Hasegawa-Wakatani model in the limits of small turbulence amplitudes (delta-f), cold ions (without finite Larmor radius effects), and homogeneous magnetic field. Several solvers are compared for the generalized Poisson problem, that is intrinsic to the full-f gyrofluid (and gyrokinetic) polarization equation, and a novel implementation based on a dynamically corrected Fourier method is proposed. The code serves as a reference case for further development of three-dimensional full-f full-k models and solvers, and for fundamental exploration of large amplitude turbulence in the edge of magnetized plasmas