Evidence of Levy stable process in tokamak edge turbulence

Abstract

The time series of floating potential and poloidal electric field fluctuations in the edge plasma of ohmically heated ADITYA tokamak [Phys. Plasmas 4, 4292 (1997)] are analyzed for self-similarity. It is observed that the distribution function of a sum of n data points converges to a self-similar distribution of Levy scale index, α=1.1-1.3 for n ≤ 40 and α=1.8-2.0 for larger n. This shows that the scaling properties of small scale fluctuations are non-Gaussian and those of large scale fluctuations are Gaussian. Implication of this observation to our understanding of plasma transport is discussed.