High Speed Imaging of Edge Turbulence in Magnetic Fusion Plasmas
Abstract
High speed videos (up to 250,000 frames/sec) will be shown of the edge plasma turbulence in two magnetic fusion devices, the Alcator C-Mod tokamak at MIT and the NSTX spherical torus at PPPL. These videos show a complicated pattern of waves and localized coherent structures which evolve on a 10 micro timescale and a few-cm space scale. Such edge turbulence appears to be universal in magnetic fusion devices and is very likely to be the cause of the plasma loss across the edge to the wall (although the loss itself can not be measured by this technique). Non-linear turbulence simulations of these edge plasmas have been made using a 3-D, 2-fluid code and can predict fairly well the size-scale spectrum of these measurements.
- Publication:
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APS April Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- April 2003
- Bibcode:
- 2003APS..APRC10009Z