Influence of Intermittency on the Quasi-perpendicular Scaling in Three-dimensional Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence
- SIGMA Weather Group, State Key Laboratory for Space Weather, National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100190, Beijing (China)
- School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, 100871 Beijing (China)
- Theoretical Division, MS B284, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 (United States)
- School of Space and Environment, Beihang University, 100191 Beijing (China)
- Institute for Experimental and Applied Physics, Christian Albrechts University at Kiel, D-24118 Kiel (Germany)
Solar wind fluctuations reveal the ubiquity of intermittency, which is believed to affect the spectral signatures of turbulence. In this work, based on simulation of driven compressible MHD turbulence, we apply the wavelet technique to the magnetic field and velocity to identify intermittency, and we analyze the influence of the intermittency on the quasi-perpendicular scaling in the inertial range. The numerical results show that the original magnetic and velocity fluctuations are anisotropic, and have a power anisotropy with a spectral index approaching the Iroshnikov–Kraichnan −3/2 scaling in the direction quasi-perpendicular to the local mean magnetic field. As in observations of the solar wind fluctuations, as the scale decreases in the simulation, the calculated probability distribution functions (pdfs) of the wavelet coefficients become extended on both tails of the non-Gaussian distribution, with a rapid increase in flatness. After intermittency has been removed from the driven turbulence, at each scale, the pdfs approach a Gaussian distribution, with the flatness being ∼3. Meanwhile, the quasi-perpendicular scaling for both fluctuations becomes steeper and close to a Kolmogorov −5/3 scaling, which may be a result of the stronger intermittency in the quasi-perpendicular direction and at the smaller scales. These results suggest that there is intermittency superposed on the “background” turbulence that seems to have the Kolmogorov scaling, whereby the overall slope is getting flatter with the involvement of intermittency.
- OSTI ID:
- 22875865
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 846, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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