S. V. Annibaldi G. Manfredi R. O. Dendy
The transport of test particle ensembles moving in turbulent electrostatic fields governed by the Hasegawa–Mima equation is investigated. It ranges from subdiffusive to ballistic, depending on the size (in terms of thermal ion Larmor radii) of the domain considered, and on the magnitude of the background density gradient. In addition to the elect…
PublishedJ. P. Graves R. O. Dendy K. I. Hopcraft E. Jakeman
Recent measurements in tokamak plasmas provide clear evidence for rapid nondiffusive transport and non-Gaussian fluctuations, and have been widely interpreted in terms of the sandpile and self-organized criticality (SOC) paradigms. Many of the statistical physics inferences that can be drawn from observations of, for example, avalanching transport …
PublishedJ. Greenhough S.C. Chapman S. Chaty R.O. Dendy G. Rowlands
Whilst direct observations of internal transport in accretion disks are not yet possible, measurement of the energy emitted from accreting astrophysical systems can provide useful information on the physical mechanisms at work. Here we examine the unbroken multi-year time variation of the total X-ray flux from three sources: Cygnus X-1, the microqu…
PublishedK. G. McClements M. E. Dieckmann A. Ynnerman S. C. Chapman R. O. Dendy
The surfatron offers the possibility of particle acceleration to arbitrarily high energies, given a sufficiently large system. Surfatron acceleration of electrons by waves excited by ions reflected from supernova remnant (SNR) shocks is investigated using particle simulations. It is shown that surfatron and stochastic acceleration could provide a s…
PublishedS. C. Chapman R.O. Dendy B. Hnat
Confinement phenomenology characteristic of magnetically confined plasmas emerges naturally from a simple sandpile algorithm when the parameter controlling redistribution scale length is varied. Close analogs are found for enhanced confinement, edge pedestals, and edge localized modes (ELMs), and for the qualitative correlations between them. These…
PublishedS. C. Chapman R. O. Dendy B. Hnat
An avalanche or ‘‘sandpile’’ model is discussed that generalizes the original self-organized criticality avalanche model of Bak, Tang, and Wiesenfeld [Phys. Rev. Lett. 59 , 381 (1987)] to include spatially extended local redistribution. A single control parameter specifies the spatial extent of local redistribution when the critical gradien…
PublishedK. G. McClements C. Hunt R. O. Dendy G. A. Cottrell
Ion cyclotron emission (ICE) excited by collective instability of fusion a particles has been observed during deuterium-tritium experiments with radio-frequency heating and neutral beam injection (NBI) in the Joint European Torus. A model based on classical a-particle confinement is broadly consistent with this data. ICE spectra from discharges wit…
PublishedS. C. Chapman R. O. Dendy G. Rowlands
There is increasing evidence that the Earth’s magnetosphere, like other macroscopic confined plasma systems (magnetic fusion plasmas, astrophysical accretion discs), displays sandpile-type phenomenology so that energy dissipation is by means of avalanches which do not have an intrinsic scale. This may in turn imply that these systems evolve via s…
PublishedP. Helander S. C. Chapman R. O. Dendy G. Rowlands N. W. Watkins
A simple one-dimensional sandpile model is constructed which possesses exact analytical solvability while displaying both scale-free behavior and fractal properties. The sandpile grows by avalanching on all scales, yet its shape and energy content are described by a simple, continuous (but nowhere differentiable) analytical formula. The avalanche e…
PublishedR. O. Dendy P. Helander
Self-organized criticality ~SOC! often features in sandpile-type modeling of complex systems such as magnetic fusion plasmas, but its observed role in real sandpiles is equivocal. Here, a probabilistic model displaying some of the observed phenomenology of real sandpiles is proposed. It generates avalanches involving particle loss that, like most e…
Published