  The self-consistent spatiotemporal evolution of drift wave (DW) radial
envelope and zonal flow (ZF) amplitude is investigated in a slab model [1].
Stationary solution of the coupled partial differential equations in a simple
limit yields formation of DW-ZF soliton structures, which propagate at group
velocity depending on the envelope peak amplitude. Additional interesting
physics, e.g. generation, destruction, collision and reflection of solitons, as
well as turbulence bursting can also be observed due to effects of linear
growth/damping, dissipation, equilibrium nonuniformities and soliton dynamics.
The propagation of soliton causes significant radial spreading of DW turbulence
and therefore can affect transport scaling with system size by broadening of
the turbulent region. Correspondence of the present analysis with the
description of DW-ZF interactions in toroidal geometry [2, 3] is also
elucidated.
