NG41A-1777
Role of Zonal Fields in Nonlinear Interaction of Kinetic Alfvén Waves
Thursday, 17 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Onnie O Luk1, Zhihong Lin2 and Xi Cheng1, (1)University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States, (2)University of Californnia, Irvine, CA, United States
Abstract:
The previous studies of spectral cascade in Alfvénic turbulence clearly show signs of plasma heating, and there are several highly-debated explanations to this phenomenon. We have developed a nonlinear gyrokinetic particle simulation to study the perpendicular spectral cascade of kinetic Alfvén wave. However, zonal fields (zonal flow and zonal current) were excluded in the study. We have modified the formulation that implements the physics of zonal fields to study the wave-wave interactions of kinetic Alfvén waves. The role of zonal fields in the nonlinear interactions of kinetic Alfvén wave will be presented.
