Radial scale length of turbulent fluctuations in the main core of TFTR plasmas.

A new theory of microwave reflectometry in tokamaks has been developed which accounts for all the major characteristics of waves reflected from strong fluctuations near the cutoff layer. The theory has been used for studying the turbulence in the main core of neutral beam heated plasmas of the TFTR tokamak in the supershot regime. The results indicate that the radial correlation length of density fluctuations is a weak decreasing function of beam power, from [approximately]4 cm in Ohmic to [approx]2 cm at 14 MW of heating power. This corresponds to the range of wavelengths k[sub [perpendicular]][rho][sub i][approx]0.1--0.3. Over the same interval of heating powers, the level of density fluctuations is observed to steadily increase with beam power by more than an order of magnitude. This trend is inconsistent with mixing length estimates of the fluctuation level.