
Final Report for Grant DE-FG03-99ER54551
Author(s) -
David Newman
Publication year - 2003
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Reports
DOI - 10.2172/836818
Subject(s) - criticality , statistical physics , turbulence , flux (metallurgy) , physics , computer science , mechanics , materials science , nuclear physics , metallurgy
The approach to treating plasma transport based on the paradigm of self-organized criticality (SOC) is largely due to the success of this paradigm as an explanation for some of the discrepancies between theoretical predictions of turbulent transport and the experimental observations. Characteristics of SOC systems are that they maintain average profiles that are linearly stable and yet are able to sustain active transport dynamics (as often observed in experiment). The dominant transport scales in SOC systems are not the underlying local fluctuation scales but are the scales of the system (again as often observed). Finally, in the presence of sheared flow, the transport can exhibit a large reduction in system sized transport. This reduction is accompanied by an increase in fluctuation (bursty) events needed to maintain the constant flux, this too is something that has been observed