NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS OF IMBALANCED STRONG MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC TURBULENCE

Journal Article · Wed Feb 10 04:00:00 EST 2010 · Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/710/1/L63; COUNTRY OF INPUT: INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY (IAEA)· OSTI ID:21301302

Perez, Jean Carlos; Boldyrev, Stanislav ^[1]

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1. Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706 (United States)

Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) is invoked to address turbulent fluctuations in a variety of astrophysical systems. MHD turbulence in nature is often anisotropic and imbalanced, in that Alfvenic fluctuations moving in opposite directions along the background magnetic field carry unequal energies. This work formulates specific requirements for effective numerical simulations of strong imbalanced MHD turbulence with a guide field B {sub 0}. High-resolution simulations are then performed and they suggest that the spectra of the counterpropagating Alfven modes do not differ from the balanced case, while their amplitudes and the corresponding rates of energy cascades are significantly affected by the imbalance. It is further proposed that the stronger the imbalance the larger the magnetic Reynolds number that is required in numerical simulations in order to correctly reproduce the turbulence spectrum. This may explain current discrepancies among numerical simulations and observations of imbalanced MHD turbulence.

• OSTI ID: 21301302
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal Letters, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Letters Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 710; ISSN 2041-8205
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
ANISOTROPY
ASTROPHYSICS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
MAGNETIC FIELDS
MAGNETIC REYNOLDS NUMBER
MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS
SOLAR WIND
SPECTRA
TURBULENCE