A blob-filament (or simply “blob”) is a magnetic-field-aligned plasma structure which is considerably denser than the surrounding background plasma and highly localized in the directions perpendicular to the equilibrium magnetic field B. In experiments and simulations, these intermittent filaments are often formed near the boundary between open and closed field lines, and seem to arise in theory from the saturation process for the dominant edge instabilities and turbulence. Blobs become charge-polarized under the action of an external force which causes unequal drifts on ions and electrons; the resulting polarization-induced E × B drift moves the blobs radially outwards across the scrape-off-layer (SOL). Since confined plasmas generally are subject to radial or outwards expansion forces (e.g., curvature and ∇B forces in toroidal plasmas), blob transport is a general phenomenon occurring in nearly all plasmas. This paper reviews the relationship between the experimental and theoretical results on blob formation, dynamics and transport and assesses the degree to which blob theory and simulations can be compared and validated against experiments.

In this paper we review some theoretical aspects of the dynamics of the mesoscale filaments extending along the magnetic field lines in the edge plasma, which are often called ‘blobs’. We start with a brief historical survey of experimental data and the main ideas on edge and SOL plasma transport, which finally evolved into the modern paradigm of convective very-intermittent cross-field edge plasma transport. We show that both extensive analytic treatments and numerical simulations demonstrate that plasma blobs with enhanced pressure can be convected coherently towards the wall. The mechanism of convection is related to an effective gravity force (e.g. owing to magnetic curvature effects), which causes plasma polarization and a corresponding E× B convection. The impacts of different effects (e.g. X-point magnetic geometry, plasma collisionality, plasma beta, etc.) on blob dynamics are considered. Theory and simulation predict, both for current tokamaks and for ITER, blob propagation speeds and cross-field sizes to be of the order of a few hundred meters per second and a centimeter, respectively, which are in reasonable agreement with available experimental data. Moreover, the concept of blobs as a fundamental entity of convective transport in the scrape-off layer provides explanations for observed outwards convective transport, intermittency and non-Gaussian statistics in edge plasmas, and enhanced wall recycling in both toroidal and linear machines.

A two-region model is proposed to study the effect of collisionality and magnetic geometry on electrostatic turbulence and on the propagation of filamentary coherent structures (blobs) in the edge and scrape-off layer. The model invokes coupled vorticity and continuity equations in two different spatial regions along the magnetic field, taking into account the effect of magnetic field fanning and shear, e.g., near magnetic X-points. A linear dispersion relation for unstable modes illustrates the physics of mode disconnection (ballooning) along the magnetic field and its dependence on collisionality and wave number (scale size). Employing an invariant scaling analysis, dimensionless parameters for the nonlinear model are developed and used to describe the regimes of the system. A blob correspondence rule is postulated to relate the linear mode growth rates and regimes to the convective velocity of blobs. Nonlinear numerical simulations of blob convection show good agreement with a blob dispersion relation derived from the correspondence rule. It is found that collisionality increases the convective velocity. The convective velocity also depends on blob scale size, with either positive or negative exponent, depending on the collisionality regime. Finally, the dimensionless scaling analysis is employed to obtain bounds on the convective velocity suitable for experimental tests.

Recent measurements show that non-diffusive, intermittent transport of particles can play a major role in the scrape-off-layer (SOL) of fusion experiments. A possible mechanism for fast convective plasma transport is related to the plasma filaments or blobs observed in the SOL with fast cameras and probes. In this paper, physical arguments suggesting the importance of blob transport [S. I. Krasheninnikov, Physics Letters A 283, 368 (2001)] have been extended by calculations using a three-field fluid model, treating the blobs as coherent propagating structures. The properties of density, temperature and vorticity blobs, and methods of averaging over ensembles of blobs to get the average SOL profiles, are illustrated. The role of ionization of background neutrals in sustaining the density blob transport is also discussed. Many qualitative features of the experiments, such as relatively flat density profiles and transport coefficients increasing toward the wall, are shown to emerge naturally from the blob transport paradigm.

Reduced model simulations of turbulence in the edge and scrape-off-layer ͑SOL͒ region of a spherical torus or tokamak plasma are employed to address the physics of the scrape-off-layer heat-flux width. The simulation model is an electrostatic two-dimensional fluid turbulence model, applied in the plane perpendicular to the magnetic field at the outboard midplane of the torus. The model contains curvature-driven-interchange modes, sheath losses, and both perpendicular turbulent diffusive and convective ͑blob͒ transport. These transport processes compete with classical parallel transport to set the SOL width. Midplane SOL profiles of density, temperature, and parallel heat flux are obtained from the simulation and compared with experimental results from the National Spherical Torus Experiment ͓S. M. Kaye et al., Phys. Plasmas 8, 1977 to study the scaling of the heat-flux width with power and plasma current. It is concluded that midplane turbulence is the main contributor to the SOL heat-flux width for the low power H-mode discharges studied, while additional physics is required to fully explain the plasma current scaling of the SOL heat-flux width observed experimentally in higher power discharges. Intermittent separatrix-spanning convective cells are found to be the main mechanism that sets the near-SOL width in the simulations. The roles of sheared flows and blob trapping versus emission are discussed.

High-speed high-spatial-resolution data obtained by the gas puff imaging (GPI) diagnostic on the National Spherical Torus Experiment [M. Ono, M.G. Bell, R.E. Bell et al. Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 45, A335 (2003).] is analyzed and interpreted in light of recent theoretical models for electrostatic edge turbulence and blob propagation. The experiment is described in terms of theoretical regimes that predict different dependencies for the radial velocity of blob convection. Using the GPI data, atomic physics analysis, and blob tracking on a restricted dataset, it is shown that the observed blob velocities in the scrape-off layer are bounded by a theory-based minimum velocity associated with the sheath-connected regime. A similar maximum velocity bound associated with the resistive-ballooning regime is also observed. Turning to the question of blob creation, it is shown that blobs are born with a density and temperature characteristic of the plasma conditions where underlying linear edge drift-curvature instabilities are localized. Finally, statistical variations in blob properties and in the radial blob velocity for given edge conditions are significant, and tend to mask any systematic changes among discharges with different conditions.

In this paper, two-dimensional blob models of convective transport in the scrape-off-layer (SOL) are generalized to include the internal temperature profile of the blob. This generalization provides a mechanism for blob internal spin and enables consideration of SOL energy transport. Solutions with aligned density and temperature contours satisfy the resulting “hot blob” equations and are considered here. It is shown that spin increases blob coherence, prevents the formation of extended radial streamers or fingers, reduces the radial convection velocity due to mixing and mitigation of the curvature-induced charge polarization, and provides a new mechanism for poloidal motion of the blob. Additionally, spinning blobs are shown to survive as coherent objects in the presence of weak externally sheared flows, and have blob speeds that depend on the sign of the spin relative to the external sheared flow. The work provides strong motivation for investigating the physics of parallel disconnected blobs, and the relationship of spin and disconnection physics to edge localized mode propagation and the density limit.

An analytic theory of the resistive X-point (RX) mode in the edge region of a diverted tokamak is developed by employing an outgoing-evanescent wave boundary condition along the field lines. This result is employed to deduce a new categorization of edge instabilities in the presence of X-points. A regime diagram shows the relationship of the RX mode to the ideal and conventional resistive ballooning modes. In addition to describing growth rates of linear instabilities, the analysis also yields regimes and scalings for nonlinear convective "blob" propagation velocities. The regime diagram and a knowledge of experimental and BOUT code simulation results, suggests that the quasicoherent mode seen in the Alcator C-Mod tokamak [M. Greenwald et al., Phys. Plasmas 6, 1943 (1999)] can be classified as an electromagnetic RX mode. Analytical scalings for the existence of this mode compare well with experimental trends, as does the solution of a model radial eigenvalue problem. Finally, using a finite Larmor radius assumption to eliminate the perpendicular wavenumber, the instability regime diagram can be converted to an edge phase space diagram. X-point physics adds a new region to this edge parameter space that is postulated to be the enhanced D-alpha (EDA) regime.