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Title: Decoupled Cascades of Kinetic and Magnetic Energy in Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence

Journal Article · · Physical Review Letters
 [1];  [1]
  1. Univ. of Rochester, NY (United States)

Magnetic energy (ME) and kinetic energy (KE) in ideal incompressible magnetohydrodynamics are not global invariants and, therefore, it has been justified to discuss only the cascade of their sum total energy. We provide a physical argument based on scale locality, along with compelling evidence that ME and KE budgets statistically decouple beyond a transitional “conversion” range. This arises because magnetic field-line stretching is a large-scale process which vanishes on average at intermediate and small scales within the inertial-inductive range, thereby allowing each of the mean ME and KE to cascade conservatively and at an equal rate, yielding a turbulent magnetic Prandtl number of unity over these scales.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Rochester, NY (United States); University of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). LBNL Materials Project
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES); USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Grant/Contract Number:
NA0003856; SC0014318; SC0019329; AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1508838
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1505243; OSTI ID: 1542918
Report Number(s):
SC0014318; SC0019329; NA0003856; 80NSSC18K0772; AC02-05CH11231; PRLTAO; 2018-270, 1491, 2450
Journal Information:
Physical Review Letters, Vol. 122, Issue 13; ISSN 0031-9007
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 19 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (4)

Three-dimensional local anisotropy of velocity fluctuations in the solar wind journal April 2019
Partial Invariants, Large-scale Dynamo Action, and the Inverse Transfer of Magnetic Helicity journal December 2019
Do Androids Dream of Magnetic Fields? Using Neural Networks to Interpret the Turbulent Interstellar Medium journal September 2019
Three-dimensional local anisotropy of velocity fluctuations in the solar wind text January 2019

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