The role of coherent vorticity in turbulent transport in resistive drift-wave turbulence

TL;DR

This paper applies a wavelet-based method to identify key coherent vortices in resistive drift-wave turbulence, revealing their role in plasma transport and differences across regimes.

Contribution

It introduces the use of the coherent vortex extraction method to analyze turbulent plasma flows, highlighting the vortices' role in transport and nonlinear dynamics.

Findings

Coherent vortices carry the radial density flux.

Vortices show nonlinearity depletion in the quasi-hydrodynamic regime.

Vorticity dominates strain in the quasi-hydrodynamic regime.

Abstract

The coherent vortex extraction method, a wavelet technique for extracting coherent vortices out of turbulent flows, is applied to simulations of resistive drift-wave turbulence in magnetized plasma (Hasegawa-Wakatani system). The aim is to retain only the essential degrees of freedom, responsible for the transport. It is shown that the radial density flux is carried by these coherent modes. In the quasi-hydrodynamic regime, coherent vortices exhibit depletion of the polarization-drift nonlinearity and vorticity strongly dominates strain, in contrast to the quasiadiabatic regime.