  The turbulence observed in the scrape-off-layer of a tokamak is often
characterized by intermittent events of bursty nature, a feature which raises
concerns about the prediction of heat loads on the physical boundaries of the
device. It appears thus necessary to delve into the statistical properties of
turbulent physical fields such as density, electrostatic potential and
temperature, focusing on the mathematical expression of tails of the
probability distribution functions. The method followed here is to generate
statistical information from time-traces of the plasma density stemming from
Braginskii-type fluid simulations, and check this against a first-principles
theoretical model. The analysis of the numerical simulations indicates that the
probability distribution function of the intermittent process contains strong
exponential tails, as predicted by the analytical theory.
