Flux-driven gyrokinetic simulations of ion turbulent transport at low magnetic shear

Ion Temperature Gradient driven turbulence is investigated with the global full-f gyrokinetic code GYSELA for different magnetic equilibria. Reversed shear and monotonous q profile cases do not exhibit dramatic changes nor in the dynamics nor in the level of turbulence, leading to similar mean profiles. Especially, no transport barrier is observed in the vicinity of s = 0 in the general case, although the radial extent of the gap without resonant modes is larger than the typical turbulence correlation length. Conversely, a transport barrier is found to develop in the gap region if non resonant modes are artificially suppressed from the simulation. Such simulations tend to reconcile previously published contradictory results, while extending the analysis to more realistic flux-driven gyrokinetic regimes.