Power law spectra and intermittent fluctuations due to uncorrelated Lorentzian pulses

Abstract

A stochastic model for intermittent fluctuations due to a super-position of uncorrelated Lorentzian pulses is presented. For a constant pulse duration, this is shown to result in an exponential power spectral density for the stationary process. A random distribution of pulse durations modifies the frequency spectrum, and several examples are shown to result in power law spectra. The distribution of pulse durations does not influence the characteristic function and thus neither the moments nor the probability density function of the random variable. It is demonstrated that the fluctuations are intrinsically intermittent through a large excess kurtosis moment in the limit of weak pulse overlap. These results allow for estimation of the basic properties of fluctuations from measurement data and describe the diversity of frequency spectra reported from measurements in magnetized plasmas.