Agradecimientos:
Research supported by Spanish DGES Grant No. ENE2006-15244-C03-01/FTN and DOE Office of Science Grant No. DE-FG02-04ER54741 at University of Alaska. ORNL researchers sponsored by U.S. DOE under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725.
A novel method to probe and characterize the nature of the transport of passive scalars carried out by a turbulent flow is introduced. It requires the determination of two exponents which encapsulate the statistical and correlation properties of the component A novel method to probe and characterize the nature of the transport of passive scalars carried out by a turbulent flow is introduced. It requires the determination of two exponents which encapsulate the statistical and correlation properties of the component of interest of the Lagrangian velocities of the flow. Numerical simulations of a magnetically confined, near-critical turbulent plasma, known to exhibit superdiffusive radial transport, are used to illustrate the method. It is shown that the method can easily detect the change in the dynamics of the radial transport that takes place after adding to the simulations a (subdominant) diffusive channel of tunable strength.[+][-]
