Drift wave vortices in nonuniform plasmas with sheared magnetic fields

Technical Report · Fri Nov 01 04:00:00 EST 1991

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/5871675· OSTI ID:5871675

Su, X N; Horton, W; Morrison, P J

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: Texas Univ., Austin, TX (United States). Inst. for Fusion Studies
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: FG05-80ET53088
• OSTI ID: 5871675
• Report Number(s): DOE/ET/53088-523; IFSR--523; ON: DE92006879
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
700340* -- Plasma Waves
Oscillations
& Instabilities-- (1992-)
CONTINUITY EQUATIONS
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
EQUATIONS
HAMILTONIANS
INHOMOGENEOUS PLASMA
ION ACOUSTIC WAVES
ION WAVES
MAGNETIC FIELDS
MAGNETIC FLUX
MATHEMATICAL OPERATORS
PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
PLASMA
PLASMA DRIFT
PLASMA WAVES
QUANTUM OPERATORS
TRAVELLING WAVES
VORTICES
WAVE EQUATIONS