Anisotropic truncation for turbulent transport and zonal flows in the Hasegawa-Wakatani system
Reduced models based on an anisotropic truncation of the Fourier space, retaining only a few poloidal wave-numbers while keeping the full radial resolution, are developed and first applied to the Hasegawa-Wakatani system. The impact of the truncation is studied first by considering the fixed-gradient formulation, and by comparing to direct numerical simulations (DNS). The turbulent particle flux, and the transition from quasi-two dimensional turbulence to the zonal flow (ZF) dominated state, are used as the main criteria for validation. It is found that at least 4 poloidal modes, distributed around the most unstable mode, are needed to observe a sharp transition, and that about 10 modes are needed to reproduce each transport regime. Then, similar reduced models are developed in a flux-driven formulation and compared to the DNS, focusing on two cases far from the nonlinear threshold of the transition from turbulence to zonal dominated states of the fixed gradient formulation. In that case, using 10 modes allows to match the probability distribution function of the particle flux of the DNS approximately. Considering the role played by different poloidal scales in the turbulent cascade, it is observed that in the turbulent state, an inverse energy cascade in radial wave-numbers takes place at large poloidal scales, while a forward enstrophy cascade in radial wave-numbers is observed to occur at smaller poloidal scales. Moreover, when they form, ZFs feed on poloidal scales that are around and slightly smaller than the injection scale, while giving their energy to the larger poloidal scales. In that case, there is an anisotropic inverse energy transfer, akin to inverse cascade, from the energy injection to the large poloidal scales through ZFs, while the forward enstrophy cascade seems to stay isotropic.