Dynamic alignment in driven magnetohydrodynamic turbulence.
Motivated by recent analytic predictions, we report numerical evidence showing that in driven incompressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence the magnetic- and velocity-field fluctuations locally tend to align the directions of their polarizations. This dynamic alignment is stronger at smaller scales with the angular mismatch between the polarizations decreasing with the scale lambda approximately as theta(lambda) is proportional to lambda(1/4). This can naturally lead to a weakening of the nonlinear interactions and provide an explanation for the energy spectrum E(k) is proportional to k(-3/2) that is observed in numerical experiments of strongly magnetized turbulence.
Mason
Joanne
J
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.
Cattaneo
Fausto
F
Boldyrev
Stanislav
S