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.