2010/08/19 by Johan Anderson, Pavlos Xanthopoulos · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.3505824
published as Phys. Plasmas 17, 110702 (2010) · 4 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2010/08/19 · arxiv updated 2010/11/10
This Letter provides a theoretical interpretation of numerically generated probability density functions (PDFs) of intermittent plasma transport events. Specifically, nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of ion-temperature-gradient turbulence produce time series of heat flux which exhibit manifestly non-Gaussian PDFs with enhanced tails. It is demonstrated that, after the removal of autocorrelations, the numerical PDFs can be matched with predictions from a fluid theoretical setup, based on the instanton method. This result points to a universality in the modeling of intermittent stochastic process, offering predictive capability.