Related papers: Shock Waves and Energy Dissipation in Magnetohydro…
Observations indicate that turbulence in the interstellar medium (ISM) is supersonic ($M_{\rm turb}\gg1$) and strongly magnetized ($\beta\sim0.01-1$), while in the intracluster medium (ICM) it is subsonic ($M_{\rm turb}\lesssim1$) and…
We here analyse numerical simulations of supersonic, hypersonic and magnetohydrodynamic turbulence that is free to decay. Our goals are to understand the dynamics of the decay and the characteristic properties of the shock waves produced.…
In magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence, the large-scale magnetic field sets a preferred local direction for the small-scale dynamics, altering the statistics of turbulence from the isotropic case. This happens even in the absence of a…
Giant molecular clouds contain supersonic turbulence and simulations of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence show that these supersonic motions decay in roughly a crossing time, which is less than the estimated lifetimes of molecular clouds. Such…
The first critical fast Mach number is defined for a magnetohydrodynamic shock as the Mach number where the shock transitions from subcritical, laminar, behavior to supercritical behavior, characterized by incident ion reflection from the…
Energy dissipation in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence is known to be highly intermittent in space, being concentrated in sheet-like coherent structures. Much less is known about intermittency in time, another fundamental aspect of…
Turbulence is fundamental to energy transfer across scales in space and astrophysical plasmas. Bow shock interactions have long been hypothesized to significantly modify turbulence in planetary environments, yet the quantification of such…
Supersonic turbulence generates distributions of shock waves. Here, we analyse the shock waves in three-dimensional numerical simulations of uniformly driven supersonic turbulence, with and without magnetohydrodynamics and self-gravity. We…
We investigate the intermittency of energy dissipation in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence by identifying dissipative structures and measuring their characteristic scales. We find that the probability distribution of energy dissipation…
Energy dissipation is highly intermittent in turbulent plasmas, being localized in coherent structures such as current sheets. The statistical analysis of spatial dissipative structures is an effective approach to studying turbulence. In…
Magnetic fields, compressibility and turbulence are important factors in many terrestrial and astrophysical processes. While energy dynamics, i.e. how energy is transferred within and between kinetic and magnetic reservoirs, has been…
Supersonic turbulence is vital to astrophysical and high-speed engineering flows, yet its energy transfer mechanisms remain poorly understood. We present high-resolution ($1024^3$) direct numerical simulations (DNS) of forced compressible…
Turbulent motions are essential to the mixing of entrained fluids and are also capable of amplifying weak initial magnetic fields by small-scale dynamo action. Here we perform a systematic study of turbulent mixing in magnetized media,…
We study the statistics of dynamical quantities associated with magnetic reconnection events embedded in a sea of strong background magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence using direct numerical simulations. We focus on the relationship of the…
Turbulence simulations play a key role in advancing the general understanding of the physical properties turbulence and in interpreting astrophysical observations of turbulent plasmas. For the sake of simplicity, however, turbulence…
Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence is a ubiquitous dynamical state of astrophysical plasmas and a primary agent in the redistribution, dissipation, and conversion of energy into particle populations. Yet turbulence is still most often…
Shocks waves are a ubiquitous feature of many astrophysical plasma systems, and an important process for energy dissipation and transfer. The physics of these shock waves are frequently treated/modeled as a collisional, fluid MHD…
Three-dimensional direct numerical simulations are used to study the energy cascade rate in isothermal compressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. Our analysis is guided by a two-point exact law derived recently for this problem in which…
Magnetohydrodynamic turbulence affects both terrestrial and astrophysical plasmas. The properties of magnetized turbulence must be better understood to more accurately characterize these systems. This work presents ideal MHD simulations of…
We utilize observations of sub-millimeter rotational transitions of CO from a Herschel Cycle 2 open time program ("COPS", PI: J. Green) to identify previously predicted turbulent dissipation by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) shocks in molecular…