Local and nonlocal anisotropic transport in reversed shear magnetic fields: Shearless Cantori and nondiffusive transport

A study of anisotropic heat transport in reversed shear (nonmonotonic q-profile) magnetic fields is presented. The approach is based on a recently proposed Lagrangian-Green's function method that allows an efficient and accurate integration of the parallel (i.e., along the magnetic field) heat transport equation. The magnetic field lines are described by a nontwist Hamiltonian system, known to exhibit separatrix reconnection and robust shearless (dq/dr=0) transport barriers. The changes in the magnetic field topology due to separatrix reconnection lead to bifurcations in the equilibrium temperature distribution. For perturbations of moderate amplitudes, magnetic chaos is restricted to bands flanking the shearless region. As a result, the temperature flattens in the chaotic bands and develops a very sharp radial gradient at the shearless region. For perturbations with larger amplitude, shearless Cantori (i.e., critical magnetic surfaces located at the minimum of the q profile) give rise to anomalous temperature relaxation involving widely different time scales. The first stage consists of the relatively fast flattening of the radial temperature profile in the chaotic bands with negligible flux across the shearless region that, for practical purposes, on a short time scale acts as an effective transport barrier despite the lack of magnetic flux surfaces. In the long-time scale, heat starts to flow across the shearless region, albeit at a comparatively low rate. The transport of a narrow temperature pulse centered at the reversed shear region exhibits weak self-similar scaling with non-Gaussian scaling functions indicating that transport at this scale cannot be modeled as a diffusive process with a constant diffusivity. Evidence of nonlocal effective radial transport is provided by the existence of regions with nonzero heat flux and zero temperature gradient. Parametric flux-gradient plots exhibit multivalued loops that question the applicability of the Fourier-Fick's prescription even in the presence of a finite pinch velocity.