Intermittent characteristics in coupling between turbulence and zonal flows

Abstract

An extended application of Gabour's wavelet to bicoherence analysis succeeds in resolving the instantaneous structure of three wave couplings between disparate scale electric field fluctuations in the high temperature core in a toroidal plasma device named the compact helical system. The obtained results quantify an intermittent linkage between turbulence and zonal flows—a highlighted issue in the present plasma research. This is the first demonstration that the intermittent nature of the three wave coupling should underlie the turbulence power modulation due to zonal flows.