Search of self-organized criticality processes in magnetically confined plasmas: hints from the reversed field pinch configuration.

In order to test the self-organized criticality (SOC) paradigm in transport processes, a novel technique has been applied for the first time to plasmas confined in reversed field pinch configuration. This technique consists of an analysis of the probability distribution function of the times between bursts in density fluctuations measured by microwave reflectometry and electrostatic probes. The same analysis has also been applied to intermittent events sorted out from the Gaussian background. In both cases, the experimental results disagree with the predictions for a SOC system.