Statistical characterization of turbulence intermittency in SOL-like regimes in the Helimak

Plasma turbulence intermittency is investigated in the Texas Helimak, a simple magnetic torus which is a physical approximation to the sheared cylindrical slab. The statistical properties of the intermittency are examined through a conditional analysis of probe signal bursts and the existence of so called "blobs", coherent plasma objects which transport large amounts of particles and heat, is explored. It is shown that the conditional analysis most likely extracts artifacts due to the finite ensemble size and that no coherent part of the bursts is detected throughout the Helimak radii for all the externally applied biases. The probe signal bursts rarely follow Poisson statistics, and a match with a recently developed stochastic model based upon this is more than likely due to the large number of parameters.Physic