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A Statistical Description of MHD Turbulence in Laboratory Plasmas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

A. Lazarian
Affiliation:
Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics University of Cambridge, Silver St., Cambridge, CB3 9EW UK
M. R. E. Proctor
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
P. C. Matthews
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
A. M. Rucklidge
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

Turbulence plays a crucial role in dynamo processes. For example, turbulent difFusion is important for the existence of the Solar dynamo. Some turbulent phenomena may be studied with presentday measurement equipment. A number of relevant diagnostics are based on the interaction of an electromagnetic beam with plasma. Here we discuss the situation in which information on plasma properties is obtained by probing plasma with a plane polarized electromagnetic beam. It is shown that the problem of recovering statistical properties of turbulence from the line integrated data can be solved uniquely using a realistic model of plasma. Analytical expressions relating structure functions of both the random density field and random magnetic field to measured structure functions have been found. This information is of importance in studies of MHD turbulence.

STATISTICAL PROPERTIES OF PLASMA TURBULENCE

Recent measurements have shown the existence of fine-scale density structures in Tokamak plasmas (Cripwell & Costley 1991). There is also experimental evidence that the anomalous (i.e. greater than collisional) particle and energy transport may be in some circumstances due to particle drift motion caused by microturbulence. These facts make the investigation of the turbulence in Tokamaks very important. To describe the phenomena, it is useful to know statistics of random magnetic and density fields.

In this paper we discuss the statistical properties of plasma which can be studied with the so-called refractometry technique probing plasma with a plane polarized electromagnetic laser or microwave beam (Gill & Magyar 1987; Weisen et al. 1988.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1994

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