The vortex structures in a cloud of electrically suspended dust in a streaming plasma constitutes a driven system with a rich nonlinear flow regime. Experimentally recovered toroidal formations of this system have motivated study of its volumetrically driven-dissipative vortex flow dynamics using two-dimensional hydrodynamics in the incompressible Navier-Stokes regime. Nonlinear equilibrium solutions are obtained for this system where a nonuniformly driven two-dimensional dust flow exhibits distinct regions of localized accelerations and strong friction caused by stationary fluids at the confining boundaries resisting the dust flow. In agreement with observations in experiments, it is demonstrated that the nonlinear effects appear in the limit of small viscosity, where the primary vortices form scaling with the most dominant spatial scales of the domain topology and develop separated virtual boundaries along their periphery. This separation is triggered beyond a critical dust viscosity that signifies a structural bifurcation. Emergence of uniform vorticity core and secondary vortices with a newer level of identical dynamics highlights the applicability of the studied dynamics to gigantic vortex flows, such as the Jovian great red spot, to microscopic biophysical intracellular activity.

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Flow structure of a dust medium electrostatically suspended and confined in a plasma presents a unique setup where the spatial scale of a volumetric drive by the plasma flow might exceed that of the boundaries confining the dust. By means of a formal implementation of a two-dimensional hydrodynamic model to a confined dust flow and its analytic curvilinear solutions, it is shown that the eigenmode spectrum of the dust vortex flow can lose correlations with the driving field even at the low dust Reynolds numbers as a result of strong shear and finer scales introduced in the equilibrium dust vorticity spectrum by the boundaries. While the boundary effects can replace the desired turbulent processes unavailable in this regime, the shear observable in most of the dust vortex flows is identified to have a definite exponent of dependence on the dust viscosity over a substantially large range of the latter. These results and scalings allow quantification of the notion of dusty plasma medium as a paradigm for a wide range of natural flow processes having scales inaccessible to ordinary laboratory experiments.

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We investigate the influence of time-delayed coupling on the nature of the aging transition in a system of coupled oscillators that have a mix of active and inactive oscillators, where the aging transition is defined as the gradual loss of collective synchrony as the proportion of inactive oscillators is increased. We start from a simple model of two time-delay coupled Stuart-Landau oscillators that have identical frequencies but are located at different distances from the Hopf bifurcation point. A systematic numerical and analytic study delineates the dependence of the critical coupling strength (at which the system experiences total loss of synchrony) on time delay and the average distance of the system from the Hopf bifurcation point. We find that time delay can act to facilitate the aging transition by lowering the threshold coupling strength for amplitude death in the system. We then extend our study to larger systems of globally coupled active and inactive oscillators including an infinite system in the thermodynamic limit. Our model system and results can provide a useful paradigm for understanding the functional robustness of diverse physical and biological systems that are prone to aging transitions.

Dynamics of an isothermally driven dust fluid is analyzed which is confined in an azimuthally symmetric cylindrical setup by an effective potential and is in equilibrium with an unconfined sheared flow of a streaming plasma. Cases are analyzed where the confining potential constitutes a barrier for the driven fluid, limiting its spatial extension and boundary velocity. The boundary effects entering the formulation are characterized by applying the appropriate boundary conditions and a range of solutions exhibiting single and multiple vortex are obtained. The equilibrium solutions considered in the cylindrical setup feature a transition from single to multiple vortex state of the driven flow. Effects of (i) the variation in dust viscosity, (ii) coupling between the driving and the driven fluid, and (iii) a friction determining the equilibrium dynamics of the driven system are characterized.

This paper presents self-consistent three-dimensional (3D) plasma transport simulations in the boundary of stellarator W7-X obtained with the Monte Carlo code EMC3-EIRENE for three typical island divertor configurations. The chosen 3D grid consists of relatively simple nested finite toroidal surfaces defined on a toroidal field period and covering the whole edge topology, which includes closed surfaces, islands and ergodic regions. Local grid refinements account for the required high resolution in the divertor region. The distribution of plasma density and temperature in the divertor region, as well as the power deposition profiles on the divertor plates, are shown to strongly depend on the island geometry, i.e. on the position and size of the dominant island chain. Configurations with strike-point positions closer to the gap of the divertor chamber generally favour the neutral compression in the divertor chamber and hence the pumping efficiency. The ratio of pumping to recycling fluxes is found to be roughly independent of the separatrix density and is thus a figure of merit for the quality of the configuration and of the divertor system in terms of density control. Lower limits for the achievable separatrix density, which determine the particle exhaust capabilities in stationary conditions, are compared for the three W7-X configurations.