Numerical observation of turbulence enhanced growth rates

An enhancement of the velocity diffusion over the quasilinear value is observed in the regime where the autocorrelation time is much smaller than the linear growth time or resonance broadening time. The diffusion enhancement occurs when the resonance broadening time is small compared with the linear growth time. These simulations are self consistent and have enough modes to be in the continuous spectrum limit. That is, even at the initial amplitudes the intermode spacing is sufficiently small that the resonance overlap parameter is large. A possible mechanism for the enhanced diffusion (spontaneous spectrum discretization) is discussed. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.