Identification and characterization of topological structures of turbulence in magnetic confined plasmas

Abstract

Abstract Transport in turbulent magnetic plasmas is closely related to the flow topological structures. These are mainly filamentary vortices linked to the magnetic filed lines and zonal flows generated from turbulence. Their identification in the experiments is not yet clear. In this work, resistive magneto-hydrodynamics simulations are used to generate turbulent flows in a plasma. The topological structures obtained from the simulations are analyzed using three different techniques: long-distance correlations, transfer of entropy and intermittence. The combination of the results using these techniques allows us to identify and characterize vortex structures and zonal flows.