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Title: Coarse-grained incompressible magnetohydrodynamics: analyzing the turbulent cascades

Journal Article · · New Journal of Physics

We formulate a coarse-graining approach to the dynamics of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) fluids at a continuum of length-scales. In this methodology, effective equations are derived for the observable velocity and magnetic fields spatially-averaged at an arbitrary scale of resolution. The microscopic equations for the bare velocity and magnetic fields are renormalized by coarse-graining to yield macroscopic effective equations that contain both a subscale stress and a subscale electromotive force (EMF) generated by nonlinear interaction of eliminated fields and plasma motions. At large coarse-graining length-scales, the direct dissipation of invariants by microscopic mechanisms (such as molecular viscosity and Spitzer resistivity) is shown to be negligible. The balance at large scales is dominated instead by the subscale nonlinear terms, which can transfer invariants across scales, and are interpreted in terms of work concepts for energy and in terms of topological flux-linkage for the two helicities. An important application of this approach is to MHD turbulence, where the coarse-graining length ℓ lies in the inertial cascade range. We show that in the case of sufficiently rough velocity and/or magnetic fields, the nonlinear inter-scale transfer need not vanish and can persist to arbitrarily small scales. Although closed expressions are not available for subscale stress and subscale EMF, we derive rigorous upper bounds on the effective dissipation they produce in terms of scaling exponents of the velocity and magnetic fields. These bounds provide exact constraints on phenomenological theories of MHD turbulence in order to allow the nonlinear cascade of energy and cross-helicity. On the other hand, we show that the forward cascade of magnetic helicity to asymptotically small scales is impossible unless 3rd-order moments of either velocity or magnetic field become infinite.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Rochester, NY (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Defense Nuclear Security; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES); USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
Grant/Contract Number:
NA0001944; 20150568ER; SC0014318
OSTI ID:
1437700
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1356076; OSTI ID: 1358358
Journal Information:
New Journal of Physics, Journal Name: New Journal of Physics Vol. 19 Journal Issue: 2; ISSN 1367-2630
Publisher:
IOP PublishingCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United Kingdom
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 38 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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