Electron geodesic acoustic modes in electron temperature gradient mode turbulence

Journal article, 2012

In this work, the first demonstration of an electron branch of the geodesic acoustic mode (el-GAM) driven by electron temperature gradient (ETG) modes is presented. The work is based on a fluid description of the ETG mode retaining non-adiabatic ions and the dispersion relation for el-GAMs driven nonlinearly by ETG modes is derived. A new saturation mechanism for ETG turbulence through the interaction with el-GAMs is found, resulting in a significantly enhanced ETG turbulence saturation level compared to the mixing length estimate.