Drift wave vortices in nonuniform plasmas with sheared magnetic fields
Nonlinear coherent structures governed by the coupled drift wave-ion acoustic mode equations in nonuniform plasmas with sheared magnetic fields are studied analytically and numerically. A solitary vortex equation that includes the effects of density and temperature gradients, and magnetic shear is derived and analyzed. The analytic and numerical studies show that for a plasma in a sheared magnetic field, even without the temperature and drift velocity gradients, solitary vortex solutions are possible; however, these solutions are not exponentially localized due to the presence of a nonstructurally stable perturbative tail that connects to the core of the vortex. The new coherent vortex structures are dipole-like in their symmetry, but are not the modons of Larichev and Reznik. In the presence of a small temperature or drift velocity gradient, the new shear-induced dipole can not survive and will separate into monopoles, like the case of the modon in a sheared drift velocity as studied in Su et al. The solitary solutions are found from the nonlinear eigenvalue problem for the effective potential in a quasi-one-dimensional approximation. The numerical simulations are performed in 2-D with the coupled vorticity and parallel mass flow equations.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Institute for Fusion Studies
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG05-80ET53088
- OSTI ID:
- 10116185
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/ET/53088-523; IFSR-523; ON: DE92006879
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Nov 1991
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Drift wave vortices in nonuniform plasmas with sheared magnetic fields
Drift wave coherent vortex structures in inhomogeneous plasmas