Onset of Turbulence and Profile Resilience in the Helimak Configuration

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Abstract
An experimental study of the onset of drift wave and flute interchange instabilities in the Helimak configuration is presented. It is shown that the Helimak offers the opportunity to separate the regions where these instabilities are active and to assess their relative role in cross-field anomalous transport and in the self-organization of exponential plasma density profiles with resilient scale length. Some results indicating a period doubling route to turbulence are also presented.