Radial Spreading of Drift-Wave-Zonal-Flow Turbulence via Soliton Formation

Journal Article · Fri Jul 31 04:00:00 EDT 2009 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.103.055002· OSTI ID:21370613

Zehua, Guo ^[1]; Liu, Chen ^[1]; Zonca, Fulvio ^[2]

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1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, California 92697 (United States)
2. Associazione EURATOM-ENEA sulla Fusione, C.P. 65-00044 Frascati (Italy)

The self-consistent spatiotemporal evolution of a drift-wave (DW) radial envelope and a zonal-flow (ZF) amplitude is investigated in a slab model. The stationary solution of the coupled partial differential equations in a simple limit yields the formation of DW-ZF soliton structures, which propagate radially with speed depending on the envelope peak amplitude. Additional interesting physics, e.g., the generation, destruction, collision, and reflection of solitons, as well as turbulence bursting can also be observed due to the effects of linear growth or damping, dissipation, equilibrium nonuniformities and soliton dynamics. The propagation of soliton causes significant radial spreading of DW turbulence and therefore can affect transport scaling with the system size by broadening of the turbulent region. The correspondence of the present analysis with the description of DW-ZF interactions in toroidal geometry is also discussed.

• OSTI ID: 21370613
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 103; ISSN 0031-9007; ISSN PRLTAO
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
AMPLITUDES
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
EQUATIONS
EQUILIBRIUM
EVOLUTION
GEOMETRY
MATHEMATICAL SOLUTIONS
MATHEMATICS
PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
QUASI PARTICLES
SOLITONS
TURBULENCE
WAVE PROPAGATION