Transport Processes in Reversed-Field-Pinch Plasmas:Inconsistency with the Self-Organized-Criticality Paradigm

A statistical analysis of the anomalous particle flux in the edge region of the RFX experiment has revealed that laminar times between bursts, which account for more than 50% of the losses, have a power law distribution and that flux fluctuations are not self-similar. These properties are found in contrast with a wide class of self-organized-criticality models so that it is concluded that there is no experimental evidence of avalanche-like process occurrence in the plasma of RFX.