Self-organization of electrostatic turbulence in a cylindrical plasma

On the basis of theory and computer simulations we show that electrostatic turbulence in a cylindrical plasma with magnetic shear and curvature self-organizes to form a macroscopic potential phi which depends only on the radial coordinate r and is given by phi(r)≅J0(pr)+C1r2+C2 where C1 and C2 are functions of a constant p. A unique feature of the potential is the existence of a coaxial phi(r0) = 0 surface at r0≅0.7a, where a is the radius of the cylinder. This surface is found to be fairly rigid and is considered to inhibit radial particle transport