Toroidal Symmetry of the Geodesic Acoustic Mode Zonal Flow in a Tokamak Plasma

Journal Article · Fri Jun 30 00:00:00 EDT 2006 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.255004· OSTI ID:20775295

Zhao, K J; Dong, J Q; Yan, L W; Hong, W Y; Qian, J; Cheng, J; Yu, D L; Yang, Q W; Ding, X T; Liu, Y; Pan, C H ^[1]; Lan, T; Yu, C X; Liu, A D ^[2]

---

1. Southwestern Institute of Physics, P.O. Box 432, Chengdu (China)
2. Department of Modern Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei (China)

The toroidal symmetry of the geodesic acoustic mode (GAM) zonal flows is identified with toroidally distributed three step Langmuir probes at the edge of the HuanLiuqi-2A (commonly referred to as HL-2A) tokamak plasmas for the first time. High coherence of both the GAM and the ambient turbulence for the toroidally displaced measurements along a magnetic field line is observed, in contrast with the high coherence of the GAM but low coherence of the ambient turbulence when the toroidally displaced measurements are not along the same field line. The radial and poloidal features of the flows are also simultaneously determined. The nonlinear three wave coupling between the high frequency turbulent fluctuations and the flows is demonstrated to be a plausible formation mechanism of the flows.

• OSTI ID: 20775295
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Vol. 96, Issue 25; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.255004; (c) 2006 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0031-9007
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
HL-2A TOKAMAK
LANGMUIR PROBE
MAGNETIC FIELDS
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
PLASMA
SYMMETRY
TOROIDAL CONFIGURATION
TURBULENCE