Fluctuations and intermittent poloidal transport in a simple toroidal plasma

In a simple magnetized toroidal plasma, fluctuation induced poloidal flux is found to be significant in magnitude. The probability distribution function of the fluctuation induced poloidal flux is observed to be strongly non-Gaussian in nature; however, in some cases, the distribution shows good agreement with the analytical form [Carreras et al., Phys. Plasmas 3, 2664 (1996)], assuming a coupling between the near Gaussian density and poloidal velocity fluctuations. The observed non-Gaussian nature of the fluctuation induced poloidal flux and other plasma parameters such as density and fluctuating poloidal velocity in this device is due to intermittent and bursty nature of poloidal transport. In the simple magnetized torus used here, such an intermittent fluctuation induced poloidal flux is found to play a crucial role in generating the poloidal flow. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.