X. Garbet 1, Y. Sarazin 2,
P. Beyer 2, Ph. Ghendrih 1, R. E. Waltz 3,
M. Ottaviani 1, S. Benkadda 2
1 Association Euratom-CEA sur la Fusion Contrôlée, CEA Cadarache,
France
2 Equipe Turbulence Plasma, LPIIM, Centre Universitaire de
Saint-Jérôme, Marseille, France
3 General Atomics, PO Box 85608, San Diego CA92186-9784, USA
Abstract
This work
deals with tokamak plasma turbulence in the case where fluxes are fixed and
profiles are allowed to fluctuate. These systems are intermittent. In
particular, radially propagating fronts, are usually observed over a broad
range of time and spatial scales. The existence of these fronts provide a way
to understand the fast transport events sometimes observed in tokamaks. It is
also shown that the confinement scaling law can still be of the gyroBohm type
in spite of these large scale transport events. Some departure from the
gyroBohm prediction is observed at low flux, i.e. when the gradients are close
to the instability threshold. Finally, it is found that the diffusivity is not
the same for a turbulence calculated at fixed flux than at fixed temperature
gradient, with the same time averaged profile.
IAEA 1999