Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminars |
that have been produced at UW-Madison over the last few years. In scope,
they cover a wide array of topics related to microinstabilities and
turbulence. The failure of ion-temperature-gradient-driven turbulence to
saturate at large beta is explained through field line decorrelation and
the depletion of zonal flows. Turbulent transport in the MST
reversed-field pinch and the HSX stellarator are investigated: critical
gradients in the former are lowered drastically by residual tearing mode
activity, whereas the latter exhibits nonlinear structure formation.
Generic stellarator research reveals a rich spectrum of subdominant
eigenmodes, which in aggregate govern transport characteristics and
which have to be included in quasilinear transport modeling. Heating in
the solar corona is studied through simulations of turbulent
reconnection, where heating rates match observations and nanoflares can
be explained by plasmoid mergers. A new plasma instability is presented,
which, in addition to affecting reconnection rates, appears to dominate
pressure-gradient-driven experiments at the LAPD device.