5 years ago

Alternative derivation of exact law for compressible and isothermal magnetohydrodynamics turbulence.

Fouad Sahraoui, Nahuel Andrés

The exact law for fully developed homogeneous compressible magnetohydrodynamics (CMHD) turbulence is derived. For an isothermal plasma, without the assumption of isotropy, the exact law is expressed as a function of the plasma velocity field, the compressible Alfv\'en velocity and the scalar density, instead of the Els\"asser variables used in previous works. The theoretical results show four different types of terms that are involved in the nonlinear cascade of the total energy in the inertial range. Each category is examined in detail, in particular those that can be written either as source or flux terms. Finally, the role of the background magnetic field $B_0$ is highlighted and comparison with the incompressible MHD (IMHD) model is discussed. This point is particularly important when testing the exact law on numerical simulations and in situ observations in space plasmas.

Publisher URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/1707.00749

DOI: arXiv:1707.00749v2

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.