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Updated: Jul 4, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Turbulent equipartition and homogenization of plasma angular momentum
O D Gürcan1, P H Diamond, T S Hahm
1Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093-0424, USA. ogurcan@ucsd.edu
Abstract:
A physical model of turbulent equipartition (TEP) of plasma angular momentum is developed. We show that using a simple, model insensitive ansatz of conservation of total angular momentum, a TEP pinch of angular momentum can be obtained. We note that this term corresponds to a part of the pinch velocity previously calculated using quasilinear gyrokinetic theory. We observe that the nondiffusive TEP flux is inward, and therefore may explain the peakedness of the rotation profiles observed in certain experiments. Similar expressions for linear toroidal momentum and flow are computed and it is noted that there is an additional effect due the radial profile of moment of inertia density.
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