Reduction of blob-filament radial propagation by parallel variation of flows: Analysis of a gyrokinetic simulation

Data from the XGC1 gyrokinetic simulation are analyzed to understand the three-dimensional spatial structure and the radial propagation of blob-filaments generated by quasi-steady turbulence in the tokamak edge pedestal and scrape-off layer plasma. Spontaneous toroidal flows vary in the poloidal direction and shear the filaments within a flux surface, resulting in a structure that varies in the parallel direction. This parallel structure allows the curvature and grad-B induced polarization charge density to be shorted out via parallel electron motion. As a result, it is found that the blob-filament radial velocity is significantly reduced from estimates that neglect parallel electron kinetics, broadly consistent with experimental observations. Conditions for when this charge shorting effect tends to dominate blob dynamics are derived and compared with the simulation.