Generation and dynamics of SOL corrugated profiles

The staircase transport regime reported in kinetic simulations of plasma turbulent transport in magnetic confinement is recovered with a simple 2D fluid model allowing for reduced damping of the zonal flows. Some of the complex dynamics of the kinetic zonation regime are recovered but the pattern of the corrugation appears to be sinusoidal with a characteristic scale comparable to that of turbulence modes with largest spectral energy, in contrast to regimes observed in global and flux-driven kinetic simulations. Enhanced zonal flows govern both an overall reduction of the SOL width and a gradual steepening of the gradients with distance to the separatrix.