Intermittency and Alignment in Strong RMHD Turbulence
Abstract
We develop an analytic model of intermittent, three-dimensional, strong, reduced magnetohydrodynamic turbulence with zero cross helicity. We take the fluctuation amplitudes to have a log-Poisson distribution and incorporate into the model a new phenomenology of scale-dependent dynamic alignment. The log-Poisson distribution in our model is characterized by two parameters. To calculate these parameters, we make use of three assumptions: that the energy cascade rate is independent of scale within the inertial range, that the most intense coherent structures at scale are sheet-like with a volume filling factor proportional to , and that most of the cascade power arises from interactions between exceptionally intense fluctuations and much weaker fluctuations. We then compute the scalings of the power spectrum, the kurtosis, higher-order structure functions, and three different average alignment angles. These scalings appear to be consistent with numerous results from direct numerical simulations.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1403.6354,
title = {Intermittency and Alignment in Strong RMHD Turbulence},
author = {Benjamin D. G. Chandran and Alexander A. Schekochihin and Alfred Mallet},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.6354},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
12 pages, 4 figures, submitted to ApJ