Plasma hole

Author

Tanaka, Masayoshi Y. ; Nagaoka, Kenichi ; Okamoto, Atsushi ; Yoshimura, Shinji ; Kono, Mitsuo

Author_Institution

Nat. Inst. for Fusion Sci., Japan

Volume

33

Issue

2

fYear

2005

fDate

4/1/2005 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

454

Lastpage

455

Abstract

Plasma hole has been observed in a magnetized cylindrical plasma. The measurements of ion flow velocity revealed that the plasma hole has a sink flow to the core on a plane perpendicular to the magnetic field and also an axial flow. The vorticity distribution determined by the flow velocity field shows localization near the center axis. According to the flow velocity field and the vorticity distribution, the plasma hole is identified as a Burgers vortex, which is intrinsic in viscous fluids and is observed in a plasma for the first time. The effective viscosity estimated from the characteristic scale length of vorticity localization exhibits an anomaly, which is three orders of magnitude higher than the classical value.

Keywords

Langmuir probes; plasma flow; plasma transport processes; viscosity; vortices; Burgers vortex; axial flow; characteristic scale length; effective viscosity; flow velocity field; ion flow velocity; magnetized cylindrical plasma; plasma hole; sink flow; viscous fluids; vorticity distribution; vorticity localization; Fluid flow measurement; Magnetic field measurement; Plasma density; Plasma devices; Plasma measurements; Plasma properties; Plasma temperature; Probes; Velocity measurement; Viscosity; Burgers vortex; directional Langmuir probe; flow velocity field; plasma hole; viscosity anomaly; vorticity;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Plasma Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0093-3813

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TPS.2005.845366

Filename

1420523