The interchange dynamics and velocity scaling of blob-like plasma filaments are investigated using a two-field reduced fluid model. For incompressible flows due to buoyancy, the maximum velocity is proportional to the square root of the relative amplitude and the square root of its cross-field size. For compressible flows in a non-uniform magnetic field, this square root scaling only holds ...

Gas-puff imaging data is used to investigate the dynamics of blob-like structures in the scrape-off layer of Alcator C-Mod. A blob-tracking algorithm is developed and used to compute blob propagation velocities and cross-field sizes for a series of discharges where the line-averaged particle density View the MathML source is varied. We find that the mean radial blob velocity increases from View the ...

Statistical properties of the scrape-off layer plasma fluctuations are studied in ohmically heated plasmas in the Alcator C-Mod tokamak. For the first time, plasma fluctuations as well as parameters that describe the fluctuations are compared across measurements from a mirror Langmuir probe (MLP) and from gas-puff imaging (GPI) that sample the same plasma discharge. This comparison is complemented ...

The velocity scaling of blobs, subject to dissipation by either electric currents to the sheaths, or dynamical friction, is studied by numerical simulations where the blob amplitude relative to the background plasma is a free parameter. When subject to dissipation by sheath currents, the radial velocity of a blob depends on the square of its cross field size l, vrad ∼ √l for small l. For large l, ...

The Alcator C-Mod mirror Langmuir probe system has been used to sample data time series of fluctuating plasma parameters in the outboard mid-plane far scrape-off layer. We present a statistical analysis of one second long time series of electron density, temperature, radial electric drift velocity and the corresponding particle and electron heat fluxes. These are sampled during stationary plasma ...

Plasma fluctuations in the scrape-off layer of the Alcator C-Mod tokamak in ohmic and high confinement modes have been analyzed using gas puff imaging data. In all cases investigated, the time series of emission from a single spatially resolved view into the gas puff are dominated by large-amplitude bursts, attributed to blob-like filament structures moving radially outwards and poloidally. There ...

Novel mechanisms for zonal flow (ZF) generation for both large relative density fluctuations and background density gradients are presented. In this non-Oberbeck–Boussinesq (NOB) regime ZFs are driven by the Favre stress, the large fluctuation extension of the Reynolds stress, and by background density gradient and radial particle flux dominated terms. Simulations of a nonlinear full-F gyro-fluid ...

Understanding the statistics of fluctuation driven flows in the boundary layer of magnetically confined plasmas is desired to accurately model the lifetime of the vacuum vessel components. Mirror Langmuir probes (MLPs) are a novel diagnostic that uniquely allow us to sample the plasma parameters on a time scale shorter than the characteristic time scale of their fluctuations. Sudden large-amplitude ...

Experiments indicate that the formation of density shoulders in the far scrape-off layer (SOL) is associated with an increase in cross-field transport and the propagation of coherent structures of high density known as blobs. It has been suggested that far SOL divertor collisionality (Λ_div) may be a controlling parameter in this physics, which could be challenging for heat flux mitigation ...