Ba. Carreras et al., SELF-ORGANIZED CRITICALITY AS A PARADIGM FOR TRANSPORT IN MAGNETICALLY CONFINED PLASMAS, Plasma physics reports, 22(9), 1996, pp. 740-753
Many models of natural phenomena manifest the basic hypothesis of self
-organized criticality (SOC) [P. Bak, C. Tang, and K. Weisenfeld, Phys
. Rev. Lett., 1987, vol. 59, p. 381]. The SOC concept brings together
the self-similarity on space and time scales that are common to many o
f these phenomena. The application of the SOC modeling concept to the
plasma dynamics near marginal stability opens new possibilities of und
erstanding issues such as Bohm scaling, profile consistency, broad-ban
d fluctuation spectra with universal characteristics, and fast time sc
ales. In this paper, we review the SOC concept and its possible applic
ations to the study of transport in magnetically confined plasmas.