Experiments have been performed on MAST using both external (n=1,2) and internal (n=3) resonant magnetic perturbation coils. ELM suppression has not been achieved even though vacuum modelling shows that either set of coils can produce a region for which the Chirikov parameter is greater than 1 wider than that required to produce ELM suppression in DIII-D. Hence having a certain width of the edge stochastic region may be a necessary criterion but is not a sufficient condition to ensure ELM suppression on any device. Although complete ELM suppression has not been achieved some effects on the ELMs have been observed including triggering ELMs in ELM free H-mode periods and increasing the ELM frequency in regularly ELMing discharges. In addition, large changes to the edge turbulence have been observed in L-mode discharges.

The anisotropic nature of solar wind magnetic turbulence fluctuations is investigated scale-by-scale using high cadence in-situ magnetic field measurements from the Cluster and ACE spacecraft missions. The data span five decades in scales from the inertial range to the electron Larmor radius. In contrast to the inertial range, there is a successive increase towards isotropy between parallel and transverse power at scales below the ion Larmor radius, with isotropy being achieved at the electron Larmor radius. In the context of wave-mediated theories of turbulence, we show that this enhancement in magnetic fluctuations parallel to the local mean background field is qualitatively consistent with the magnetic compressibility signature of kinetic Alfvén wave solutions of the linearized Vlasov equation. More generally, we discuss how these results may arise naturally due to the prominent role of the Hall term at sub-ion Larmor scales. Furthermore, computing higher-order statistics, we show that the full statistical signature of the fluctuations at scales below the ion Larmor radius is that of a single isotropic globally scale-invariant process distinct from the anisotropic statistics of the inertial range.

A statistical relationship between magnetic reconnection, current sheets, and intermittent turbulence in the solar wind is reported for the first time using in situ measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 AU. We identify intermittency as non-Gaussian fluctuations in increments of the magnetic field vector B that are spatially and temporally nonuniform. The reconnection events and current sheets are found to be concentrated in intervals of intermittent turbulence, identified using the partial variance of increments method: within the most non-Gaussian 1% of fluctuations in B, we find 87%-92% of reconnection exhausts and ∼9% of current sheets. Also, the likelihood that an identified current sheet will also correspond to a reconnection exhaust increases dramatically as the least intermittent fluctuations are removed from the data set. Hence, the turbulent solar wind contains a hierarchy of intermittent magnetic field structures that are increasingly linked to current sheets, which in turn are progressively more likely to correspond to sites of magnetic reconnection. These results could have far reaching implications for laboratory and astrophysical plasmas where turbulence and magnetic reconnection are ubiquitous.