Observation of Avalanchelike Phenomena in a Magnetically Confined Plasma

Abstract

Electron temperature fluctuations seen in a magnetically confined tokamak plasma have some of the characteristics of the avalanchelike events sometimes associated with self-organized criticality, including intermittency, large space and time scales, “ $1/f$” spectra, large tails in the autocorrelation function, and clear evidence of radial propagation.