Statistical analysis of Hasegawa - Wakatani turbulence

Resistive drift wave turbulence is a multipurpose paradigm that can be used to understand transport at the edge of fusion devices. The Hasegawa-Wakatani model captures the essential physics of drift turbulence while retaining the simplicity needed to gain a qualitative understanding of this process. We provide a theoretical interpretation of numerically generated probability density functions (PDFs) of intermittent events in Hasegawa-Wakatani turbulence with enforced equipartition of energy in large scale zonal flows and small scale drift turbulence. We find that for a wide range of adiabatic index values the stochastic component representing the small scale turbulent eddies of the flow, obtained from the ARIMA model, exhibits super-diffusive statistics, consistent with intermittent transport. The PDFs of large events (above one standard deviation) are well approximated by the Laplace distribution, while small events often exhibit a Gaussian character. Furthermore there exist a strong influence of zonal flows for example, via shearing and then viscous dissipation maintaining a sub-diffusive character of the fluxes

Phase dependent advection-diffusion in drift wave - zonal flow turbulence

In plasma turbulence theory, due to the complexity of the system with many non-linearly interacting waves, the dynamics of the phases is often disregarded and the so-called random-phase approximation (RPA) is used assuming the existence of a Chirikov-like criterion for the onset of wave stochasticity. The dynamical amplitudes are represented as complex numbers, $\psi = \psi_r + i\psi_i = ae^{i\theta}$, with the amplitudes slowly varying whereas the phases are rapidly varying and, in particular, distributed uniformly over the interval $[0;2\pi)$. However, one could expect that the phase dynamics can play a role in the self-organisation and the formation of coherent structures. In the same manner it is also expected that the RPA falls short to take coherent interaction between phases into account. In this work therefore, we studied the role of phase dynamics and the coupling of phases between different modes on the characteristic time evolution of the turbulent. We assume a simple turbulent system where the so-called stochastic oscillator model can be employed. The idea of interpreting turbulence by stochastic oscillators. The stochastic oscillator models can be derived from radical simplifications of the nonlinear terms in the Navier-Stokes or Gyro-Kinetic equations. In this particular case we adopt the basic equation for the stochastic oscillator model with passive advection and random forcing from Ref.Comment: Proceedings of the 43rd EPS Conference on Plasma Physics, July 4-8, Leuven, Belgium 201

Non-Linear Langevin and Fractional Fokker-Planck Equations for Anomalous Diffusion by Levy Stable Processes

The~numerical solutions to a non-linear Fractional Fokker--Planck (FFP) equation are studied estimating the generalized diffusion coefficients. The~aim is to model anomalous diffusion using an FFP description with fractional velocity derivatives and Langevin dynamics where L\'{e}vy fluctuations are introduced to model the effect of non-local transport due to fractional diffusion in velocity space. Distribution functions are found using numerical means for varying degrees of fractionality of the stable L\'{e}vy distribution as solutions to the FFP equation. The~statistical properties of the distribution functions are assessed by a generalized normalized expectation measure and entropy and modified transport coefficient. The~transport coefficient significantly increases with decreasing fractality which is corroborated by analysis of experimental data.Comment: 20 pages 7 figure

Effects of the Second Harmonic and Plasma Shaping on the Geodesic Acoustic Mode

The effects of second harmonics of the density and temperature perturbations on the linear Geodesic Acoustic Mode (GAM) frequency and non-linear generation of the GAM are investigated, using a fluid model. We show that the second harmonics contribute to the frequency through the density gradient scale length and the wave number of the GAM. In addition, the linear frequency of the GAM is generally increased by coupling to the higher harmonic.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 41st EPS Conference Berlin 201

Effects of the Second Harmonic on the GAM in Electron Scale Turbulence

The effects higher order harmonics have been self-consistently included in the derivation of the electron branch of the electron Geodesic Acoustic Mode (el-GAM) in an Electron-Temperature-Gradient (ETG) turbulence background. The work is based on a two-fluid model including finite $\beta$-effects while retaining non-adiabatic ions. In solving the linear dispersion relation, it is found that the due to the coupling to the $m=2$ mode the real frequency may be significantly altered and yield higher values.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure. Work presented at 15th EFTC 2013, September 23-26th, Oxford, Englan

High Frequency Geodesic Acoustic Modes in Electron Temperature Gradient Mode Turbulence

In this work the first demonstration of a high frequency branch of the geodesic acoustic mode (GAM) driven by electron temperature gradient (ETG) modes is presented. The work is based on a fluid description of the ETG mode retaining non-adiabatic ions and the dispersion relation for high frequency GAMs driven nonlinearly by ETG modes is derived. A new saturation mechanism for ETG turbulence through the interaction with high frequency GAMs is found, resulting in a significantly enhanced ETG turbulence saturation level compared to the mixing length estimate.Comment: 14 pages, submitted to Physics of Plasma

Predicting PDF tails of flux in plasma sheath region

This letter provides the first prediction of the probability density function (PDF) of flux $R$ in plasma sheath sheath region in magnetic fusion devices which is characterized by dynamical equations with exponential non-linearities. By using a non-perturbative statistical theory (instantons), the PDF tails of first moment are shown to be modified Gumbel distribution which represents a frequency distribution of the extreme values of the ensemble. The non-Gaussian PDF tails that are enhanced over Gaussian predictions are the result of intermittency caused by short lived coherent structures (instantons).Comment: 13 pages, 1 figur

Signature of a universal statistical description for drift-wave plasma turbulence

This Letter provides a theoretical interpretation of numerically generated probability density functions (PDFs) of intermittent plasma transport events. Specifically, nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of ion-temperature-gradient turbulence produce time series of heat flux which exhibit manifestly non-Gaussian PDFs with enhanced tails. It is demonstrated that, after the removal of autocorrelations, the numerical PDFs can be matched with predictions from a fluid theoretical setup, based on the instanton method. This result points to a universality in the modeling of intermittent stochastic process, offering predictive capability.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Self-organisation of random oscillators with L\'evy stable distributions

A novel possibility of self-organized behaviour of stochastically driven oscillators is presented. It is shown that synchronization by L\'evy stable processes is significantly more efficient than that by oscillators with Gaussian statistics. The impact of outlier events from the tail of the distribution function was examined by artificially introducing a few additional oscillators with very strong coupling strengths and it is found that remarkably even one such rare and extreme event may govern the long term behaviour of the coupled system. In addition to the multiplicative noise component, we have investigated the impact of an external additive L\'evy distributed noise component on the synchronisation properties of the oscillators.Comment: Accepted in J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. (2017