ANALYSIS OF CHAOS IN PLASMA TURBULENCE

A two-dimensional slab model for resistive drift waves in plasmas cons isting of two coupled nonlinear partial differential equations for the density perturbation n and the electrostatic potential perturbation p hi is investigated. The drift waves are linearly unstable, and a quasi -stationary turbulent state is reached in a finite time, independent o f the initial conditions. Different regimes of the turbulent state can be obtained by varying the coupling parameter C, related to the paral lel electron dynamics. The turbulence is described by using particle t racking and tools from chaos analysis. The largest Lyapunov exponent l ambda(1) is calculated for different values of C to quantify the chaot icity and compared with Lagrangian inverse time scales obtained by tra cking virtual fluid particles.