Self Organization of Edge and Internal Pedestals in a Sandpile

Abstract

The temperature profiles of magnetically confined plasmas can display distinctive longlived pedestals at the edge and internally. Here we show that such structures can arise naturally through avalanching transport in a sandpile model. A single control parameter that is constant across the sandpile determines the occurrence and regularity of these effects, as well as the entrainment of global confinement to edge pedestal dynamics. The system dynamics indicate that the pedestals are a consequence of an inverse cascade in real space, and that self organization is necessary for their occurrence.