ABSTRACT
For the first time it is experimentally demonstrated on the JET tokamak that a combination of a low impurity concentration bulk plasma and large magnetohydrodynamic instabilities is able to suppress relativistic electron beams without measurable heat loads onto the plasma facing components. Magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the instability and modeling of the postinstability plasma confirm the prompt loss of runaways and the absence of regeneration during the final current collapse. These surprising findings motivate a new approach to dissipate runaway electrons generated during tokamak plasma disruptions.
ABSTRACT
The dynamics in the thin boundary layers of temperature and velocity is the key to a deeper understanding of turbulent transport of heat and momentum in thermal convection. The velocity gradient at the hot and cold plates of a Rayleigh-Bénard convection cell forms the two-dimensional skin friction field and is related to the formation of thermal plumes in the respective boundary layers. Our analysis is based on a direct numerical simulation of Rayleigh-Bénard convection in a closed cylindrical cell of aspect ratio Γ=1 and focused on the critical points of the skin friction field. We identify triplets of critical points, which are composed of two unstable nodes and a saddle between them, as the characteristic building block of the skin friction field. Isolated triplets as well as networks of triplets are detected. The majority of the ridges of linelike thermal plumes coincide with the unstable manifolds of the saddles. From a dynamical Lagrangian perspective, thermal plumes are formed together with an attractive hyperbolic Lagrangian coherent structure of the skin friction field. We also discuss the differences from the skin friction field in turbulent channel flows from the perspective of the Poincaré-Hopf index theorem for two-dimensional vector fields.
