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Impact Of The Electron Density And Temperature Gradient On Drift-Wave Turbulence In The Large Plasma Device, Conor Perks, Saskia Mordijck, Troy Carter, Bart Van Compernolle, Stephen Vincena, Giovanni Rossi, David A. Schaffner

Physics Faculty Research and Scholarship

In this paper we present an experimental study of edge turbulence in the Large Plasma Device at UCLA. We utilize a scan of discharge power and prefill pressure (neutral density) to show experimentally that turbulent density fluctuations decrease with decreasing density gradient, as predicted for resistive drift-wave turbulence (RDWT). As expected for RDWT, we observe that the cross-phase between the density and potential fluctuations is close to 0. Moreover, the addition of an electron temperature gradient leads to a reduction in the amplitude of the density fluctuations, as expected for RDWT. However, counter to theoretical expectations, we find that the …