Sheared mean flows and transport in magnetized plasmas

Odd Erik Garcia
Physics Department, University of Tromsų, Norway
odd@phys.uit.no

ABSTRACT:
Results from two-dimensional simulations of convective transport in the presence of sheared mean flows are presented. It is shown that strongly driven thermal convection leads to periodic bursting of energy integrals and heat fluxes which are reproduced with a predator-prey model including a sub-critical bifurcation. By using R/S analysis we further observe that the fluctuations have long time correlations. Some discussion of mean flow generation in toroidal geometry and ambipolar diffusion in weakly ionized plasmas is also given.