Causal relationship between zonal flow and turbulence in a toroidal plasma

Electric field fluctuations are directly measured using twin heavy-ion-beam probes in Compact Helical System. The spectrum of the electric field fluctuation reveals the existence of a zonal flow at a frequency of less than 1 kHz, coherent modes with a long correlation length (conjectured as geodesic acoustic modes), and background turbulence. Analyses using a wavelet elucidate nonlinear interactions between these fluctuation components in disparate scales. The highlighted findings are that the turbulent fluctuations should be modulated in response to the direction of zonal flow, and should be suppressed, on average, by the zonal flow. This is the first observation that demonstrates the causal linkage between zonal flow and turbulence in toroidal plasmas at a high temperature.