Self-organization of isotopic and drift-ware turbulence

Pas de résuméIn order to give a general statistical description of turbulence, one tries to identify universal statistical features, common to a wider class of turbulent flows. In 1988, Kraichnan and Panda discovered one such possibly universal feature, namely, the fact that Navier-Stokes turbulence tends to reduce the strength of the nonlinearity in its governing equations. In the flrst part of the manuscript we consider the strength of the nonlinear term and, more precisely, of its fluctuations in isotropic turbulence. In order to measure this strength, we compare to the case of a flow fleld with the same energy distribution where the modes are statistically independent, as is the case in Gaussian noise. It is shown that the turbulent flow self-organizes towards a state in which the nonlinearity is reduced, and it is discussed what the implications of this reduction are. Also, in two dimensions it is illustrated how this self-organization manifests itself through the appearance of well-deflned vortical flow structures. In the second part of the manuscript, we investigate the dynamics of the Hasegawa- Wakatani model, a model relevant in the study of magnetically conflned fusion plasmas. The two-dimensional version of this model is considered, which includes some key features of the turbulent dynamics of a tokamak-edge. We consider the limit of the model in which the nonlinearity is reduced with respect to the linear forces. For this weakly nonlinear, wave dominated regime, analytical predictions suggest the presence of a feedback loop in which energy is transferred to highly anisotropic zonal flows by nonlocal interactions. We confirm these predictions and we demonstrate a strong suppression of the turbulent radial particle flux. In wall bounded geometry, the same mechanism is observed and here also the flux is eflciently reduced by the turbulence-zonal flow interaction