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The decay of isotropic magnetohydrodynamics turbulence and the effects of cross-helicity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2018

Antoine Briard Open the ORCID record for Antoine Briard [Opens in a new window]  and
Thomas Gomez Open the ORCID record for Thomas Gomez [Opens in a new window]
Antoine Briard*
Affiliation:
∂’Alembert, CNRS UMR 7190, 4 Place Jussieu, F-75252 Paris CEDEX 5, France Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, Centrale Marseille, M2P2 UMR 7340, 13451 Marseille, France
Thomas Gomez
Affiliation:
USTL, LML, F-59650 Villeneuve d’Ascq, France
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

Decaying homogeneous and isotropic magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) turbulence is investigated numerically at large Reynolds numbers thanks to the eddy-damped quasi-normal Markovian (EDQNM) approximation. Without any background mean magnetic field, the total energy spectrum $E$ scales as $k^{-3/2}$ in the inertial range as a consequence of the modelling. Moreover, the total energy is shown, both analytically and numerically, to decay at the same rate as kinetic energy in hydrodynamic isotropic turbulence: this differs from a previous prediction, and thus physical arguments are proposed to reconcile both results. Afterwards, the MHD turbulence is made imbalanced by an initial non-zero cross-helicity. A spectral modelling is developed for the velocity–magnetic correlation in a general homogeneous framework, which reveals that cross-helicity can contain subtle anisotropic effects. In the inertial range, as the Reynolds number increases, the slope of the cross-helical spectrum becomes closer to $k^{-5/3}$ than $k^{-2}$ . Furthermore, the Elsässer spectra deviate from $k^{-3/2}$ with cross-helicity at large Reynolds numbers. Regarding the pressure spectrum $E_{P}$ , its kinetic and magnetic parts are found to scale with $k^{-2}$ in the inertial range, whereas the part due to cross-helicity rather scales in $k^{-7/3}$ . Finally, the two $4/3$ rd laws for the total energy and cross-helicity are assessed numerically at large Reynolds numbers.

Keywords

plasma dynamicsplasma nonlinear phenomenaplasma simulation
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Plasma Physics , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , 905840110
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

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