Comparing pedestal structure in JET-ILW H-mode plasmas with a model for stiff ETG turbulent heat transport.

A predictive model for the electron temperature profile of the H-mode pedestal is described, and its results are compared with the pedestal structure of JET-ILW plasmas. The model is based on a scaling for the gyro-Bohm normalized, turbulent electron heat flux [Formula: see text] resulting from electron temperature gradient (ETG) turbulence, derived from results of nonlinear gyrokinetic (GK) calculations for the steep gradient region. By using the local temperature gradient scale length [Formula: see text] in the normalization, the dependence of [Formula: see text] on the normalized gradients [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] can be represented by a unified scaling with the parameter [Formula: see text], to which the linear stability of ETG turbulence is sensitive when the density gradient is sufficiently steep. For a prescribed density profile, the value of [Formula: see text] determined from this scaling, required to maintain a constant electron heat flux [Formula: see text] across the pedestal, is used to calculate the temperature profile. Reasonable agreement with measurements is found for different cases, the model providing an explanation of the relative widths and shifts of the [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] profiles, as well as highlighting the importance of the separatrix boundary conditions. Other cases showing disagreement indicate conditions where other branches of turbulence might dominate. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'H-mode transition and pedestal studies in fusion plasmas'.

Global Theory of Microtearing Modes in the Tokamak Pedestal.

The pedestal of H-mode tokamaks displays strong magnetic fluctuations correlated with the evolution of the electron temperature. The microtearing mode (MTM), a temperature-gradient-driven instability that alters magnetic topology, is compatible with these observations. Here we extend the conventional theory of the MTM to include the global variation of the temperature and density profiles. The offset between the rational surface and the location of the pressure gradient maximum (µ) emerges as a crucial parameter for MTM stability. The extended theory matches observations on the Joint European Torus tokamak.

Stellarator Turbulence: Subdominant Eigenmodes and Quasilinear Modeling.

Owing to complex geometry, gyrokinetic simulations in stellarator geometry produce large numbers of subdominant unstable and stable, near-orthogonal eigenmodes. Here, results based on the full eigenmode spectrum in stellarator geometry are presented for the first time. In the nonlinear state of a low-magnetic-shear ion-temperature-gradient-driven case, a multitude of these modes are active and imprint the system. Turbulent frequency spectra are broadband as a consequence, in addition to a nonlinear, narrow signature at electron frequencies. It is shown that successful quasilinear, mixing-length transport modeling is possible in stellarators, where it is essential to account for all subdominant unstable modes.

Subdominant modes in zonal-flow-regulated turbulence.

From numerical solutions of a gyrokinetic model for ion temperature gradient turbulence it is shown that nonlinear coupling is dominated by three-wave interactions that include spectral components of the zonal flow and damped subdominant modes. Zonal flows dissipate very little energy injected by the instability, but facilitate its transfer from the unstable mode to dissipative subdominant modes, in part due to the small frequency sum of such triplets. Although energy is transferred to higher wave numbers, consistent with shearing, a large fraction is transferred to damped subdominant modes within the instability range. This is a new aspect of regulation of turbulence by zonal flows.

Nonuniversal power-law spectra in turbulent systems.

Turbulence is generally associated with universal power-law spectra in scale ranges without significant drive or damping. Although many examples of turbulent systems do not exhibit such an inertial range, power-law spectra may still be observed. As a simple model for such situations, a modified version of the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation is studied. By means of semianalytical and numerical studies, one finds power laws with nonuniversal exponents in the spectral range for which the ratio of nonlinear and linear time scales is (roughly) scale independent.

Transition between saturation regimes of gyrokinetic turbulence.

A gyrokinetic model of ion temperature gradient driven turbulence in magnetized plasmas is used to study the injection, nonlinear redistribution, and collisional dissipation of free energy in the saturated turbulent state over a broad range of driving gradients and collision frequencies. The dimensionless parameter L(T)/L(C), where L(T) is the ion temperature gradient scale length and L(C) is the collisional mean free path, is shown to parametrize a transition between a saturation regime dominated by nonlinear transfer of free energy to small perpendicular (to the magnetic field) scales and a regime dominated by dissipation at large scales in all phase space dimensions.

Extreme heat fluxes in gyrokinetic simulations: a new critical ß.

A hitherto unexplained feature of electromagnetic simulations of ion temperature gradient turbulence is the apparent failure of the transport levels to saturate for certain parameters; this effect, termed here nonzonal transition, has been referred to as the high-ß runaway. The resulting large heat fluxes are shown to be a consequence of reduced zonal flow activity, brought on by magnetic field perturbations shorting out flux surfaces.

Origin of magnetic stochasticity and transport in plasma microturbulence.

Nonlinear excitation of linearly stable microtearing modes--with zonal modes acting as a catalyst--is shown to be responsible for the near-ubiquitous magnetic stochasticity and associated electromagnetic electron heat transport in electromagnetic gyrokinetic simulations of plasma microturbulence.

Gyrokinetic microtearing turbulence.

The nonlinear dynamics of microtearing modes in standard tokamak plasmas are investigated by means of ab initio gyrokinetic simulations. The saturation levels of the magnetic field fluctuations can be understood in the framework of a balance between (small poloidal wave number) linear drive and small-scale dissipation. The resulting heat transport is dominated by the electron magnetic component, and the transport levels are found to be experimentally relevant. Microtearing modes thus constitute another candidate for explaining turbulent transport in such toroidal systems.

Saturation of gyrokinetic turbulence through damped eigenmodes.

In the context of toroidal gyrokinetic simulations, it is shown that a hierarchy of damped modes is excited in the nonlinear turbulent state. These modes exist at the same spatial scales as the unstable eigenmodes that drive the turbulence. The larger amplitude subdominant modes are weakly damped and exhibit smooth, large-scale structure in velocity space and in the direction parallel to the magnetic field. Modes with increasingly fine-scale structure are excited to decreasing amplitudes. In aggregate, damped modes define a potent energy sink. This leads to an overlap of the spatial scales of energy injection and peak dissipation, a feature that is in contrast with more traditional turbulent systems.

Uncovering turbulent plasma dynamics via deep learning from partial observations.

One of the most intensely studied aspects of magnetic confinement fusion is edge plasma turbulence which is critical to reactor performance and operation. Drift-reduced Braginskii two-fluid theory has for decades been widely applied to model boundary plasmas with varying success. Towards better understanding edge turbulence in both theory and experiment, we demonstrate that a physics-informed deep learning framework constrained by partial differential equations can accurately learn turbulent fields consistent with the two-fluid theory from partial observations of electron pressure which is not otherwise possible using conventional equilibrium models. This technique presents a paradigm for the advanced design of plasma diagnostics and validation of magnetized plasma turbulence theories in challenging thermonuclear environments.

Perceptual consequences of peripheral hearing loss: do edge effects exist for abrupt cochlear lesions?

There is a growing body of research that shows evidence of central neural reorganization in response to lesions in the auditory periphery, even if the lesions occur in maturity. This reorganization consists of an increased neural representation of frequencies corresponding to the edge frequency of the lesion. Data were collected to determine whether this over-representation might have consequences for human perception. The hypothesis was that increased central representation might increase acuity on some psychophysical tasks performed at the edge frequency. Tasks included frequency sweep detection (for tones), intensity discrimination (for 100-Hz-wide bands of noise and tones), gap detection and gap discrimination (both for 100-Hz-wide bands of noise). Results from observers with steeply sloping hearing losses were compared with results from normal-hearing observers performing these tasks with masking noise generated to simulate steeply sloping hearing loss. None of these data provide compelling evidence for the hypothesized edge effect. A 40-Hz following response to tone bursts was collected from a subset of the hearing-impaired observers in an attempt to confirm the animal physiology findings of neural over-representation of the edge frequency. No edge-frequency effect was noted in the results, though there was a non-significant tendency for one of the hearing-impaired observers to show shorter latency of response.

Temporal analysis and stimulus fluctuation in listeners with normal and impaired hearing.

The first experiment investigated the effects of mild to moderate sensorineural hearing impairment on temporal analysis for noise stimuli of varying bandwidth. Tasks of temporal gap detection, amplitude modulation (AM) detection, and AM discrimination were examined. Relatively high levels of stimulation were used in order to reduce the possibility that the results of the listeners with hearing impairment would be influenced strongly by audibility. A general summary of results was that there was relatively great interlistener variation among the listeners with hearing impairment, with most listeners showing normal performance and some showing degraded performance, regardless of the bandwidth of the stimulus carrying the temporal information. A second experiment investigated the hypothesis that listeners with sensorineural hearing impairment might have poor gap detection due to loudness recruitment. Here, gap markers were presented at levels where loudness growth was steeper for the listeners with hearing impairment than for the listeners with normal hearing. Although gap detection was sometimes poorer in listeners with hearing impairment than in listeners with normal hearing, there was no clear relation between gap detection performance and loudness recruitment in listeners with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing impairment.

Facilitating dynamo action via control of large-scale turbulence.

The magnetohydrodynamic dynamo effect is considered to be the major cause of magnetic field generation in geo- and astrophysical systems. Recent experimental and numerical results show that turbulence constitutes an obstacle to dynamos; yet its role in this context is not totally clear. Via numerical simulations, we identify large-scale turbulent vortices with a detrimental effect on the amplification of the magnetic field in a geometry of experimental interest and propose a strategy for facilitating the dynamo instability by manipulating these detrimental "hidden" dynamics.

Effects of masker gating for signal detection in unmodulated and modulated bandlimited noise.

Thresholds for a 400-ms 1000-Hz pure-tone signal were obtained as a function of masking noise bandwidth for unmodulated and square wave modulated masking noise. Rates of modulation were 10 and 40 Hz. Noise bandwidths were 128 Hz, 387 Hz, 921 Hz, and 1505 Hz. The masking noise was either continuous or gated on and off with the signal. In general, signal thresholds were relatively constant as a function of noise bandwidth in unmodulated noise, and improved as a function of increasing noise bandwidth in modulated noise. Noise gating had little or no effect on signal threshold in unmodulated noise. At the 10-Hz modulation rate, signal thresholds were somewhat higher in gated than in continuous noise at relatively narrow noise bandwidths, but thresholds were similar in gated and continuous noise for relatively wide noise bandwidths. At bandwidths of 387, 921, and 1505 Hz, comodulation masking release (CMR) was calculated as the unmodulated noise threshold minus the modulated noise threshold, corrected by the difference between the unmodulated noise threshold and the modulated noise threshold at the 128-Hz bandwidths. At wide masker bandwidth, CMRs were higher for gated noise than for continuous noise. This was due almost entirely to the threshold gating effect found in the 128-Hz bandwidth condition. These results suggested that there was a within-channel effect for gated noise thresholds to be higher than continuous noise thresholds, but essentially no across-channel effect of gating. At the 40-Hz modulation rate, signal thresholds were similar for gated and continuous noise at all noise bandwidths. There was a very small but significant' effect for the gated noise threshold to be lower than the continuous noise threshold at the widest noise bandwidth. It was speculated that this effect may be related to a decrease in sensitivity to modulation with continuous stimulation. In general, effects of gating appear to be small or absent for across-channel masking release in broadband modulated masking noise.

Comodulation masking release (CMR): effects of gating as a function of number of flanking bands and masker bandwidth.

Normal-hearing subjects participated in two CMR experiments. For experiment 1, two, three, five or nine 20-Hz-wide comodulated flanking bands were presented continuously or gated simultaneously with a 2000-Hz signal. The signal had a duration of 400 ms. Larger CMRs were obtained as the number of flanking bands increased for both the continuous and gated conditions. For fewer number of bands, the average CMR for continuous noise was substantially larger than for gated noise. As the number of bands increased, CMR increased more for gated than for continuous noise, and the difference between CMRs for gated and continuous noise decreased. Experiment 2 involved detecting a 400-ms 1000-Hz pure-tone signal in a seven-band comodulated noise complex. The noise bands, presented continuously or gated with the signal, were either 10, 20, 40, or 80 Hz wide. Larger CMRs were observed for continuous maskers and for smaller masker bandwidths; however, the effect of gating did not change significantly across bandwidth. The results of the first experiment indicate that the effects of gating on CMR are minimized when the number of auditory channels providing information is large. The results of the second experiment indicate that this effect is not simply a function of the large CMR magnitude obtained with a large number of flanking bands.

Gold vapor laser versus tunable argon-dye laser for endobronchial photodynamic therapy.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: To compare the effectiveness of a gold vapor pulsed laser versus an argon dye continuous wave laser system in decreasing the amount of obstruction caused by endobronchial tumors when they are treated with photodynamic therapy (PDT). STUDY DESIGN/MATERIALS AND METHODS: The percentage of endobronchial obstruction from tumors before and at the end of PDT, and before and at the end of toilet bronchoscopy of 96 sites treated with light generated by a Spectra Physics tunable argon dye system were compared to those of 17 sites treated with light generated by a gold vapor laser. All patients were injected intravenously with 60 mg of dihematoporphyrin ethers per square meter of body surface. All treatments were done with a power density of 500 mW/CF and a light dose of 400 J/CF delivered from cylinder diffusing fibers. RESULTS: Paired Student's t-tests and Wilcoxon signed ranks tests showed significant decreases in the percentage of endobronchial obstruction due to PDT regardless of the laser used. Unpaired Student's t-tests and Mann-Whitney U statistical comparisons showed no significant difference between the two lasers in the percentage decrease at PDT, percentage increase from exudate seen at toilet bronchoscopy, nor the percentage decrease at the end of the toilet bronchoscopy from that before PDT. CONCLUSION: We found no statistically significant difference in the decrease in the amount of endobronchial tumor obstruction obtained when the light for treatment was generated by a pulsed gold vapor or a continuous wave argon dye laser system.