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Wave Turbulence in Inertial Electron Magnetohydrodynamics

Plasma Physics 2022-10-26 v1 Fluid Dynamics Space Physics

Abstract

A wave turbulence theory is developed for inertial electron magnetohydrodynamics (IEMHD) in the presence of a relatively strong and uniform external magnetic field B0=B0e^\boldsymbol{B_0} = B_0 \hat{\boldsymbol{e}}_\|. This regime is relevant for scales smaller than the electron inertial length ded_e. We derive the kinetic equations that describe the three-wave interactions between inertial whistler or kinetic Alfv\'en waves. We show that for both invariants, energy and momentum, the transfer is anisotropic (axisymmetric) with a direct cascade mainly in the direction perpendicular (\perp) to B0\boldsymbol{B_0}. The exact stationary solutions (Kolmogorov-Zakharov spectra) are obtained for which we prove the locality. We also found the Kolmogorov constant CK8.474C_K \simeq 8.474. In the simplest case, the study reveals an energy spectrum in k5/2k1/2k_\perp^{-5/2} k_\|^{-1/2} and a momentum spectrum enslaved to the energy dynamics in k3/2k1/2k_\perp^{-3/2} k_\|^{-1/2}. These solutions correspond to a magnetic energy spectrum k9/2\sim k_\perp^{-9/2}, which is steeper than the EMHD prediction made for scales larger than ded_e. We conclude with a discussion on the application of the theory to space plasmas.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.08577,
  title  = {Wave Turbulence in Inertial Electron Magnetohydrodynamics},
  author = {Vincent David and Sébastien Galtier},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.08577},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

31 pages, 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T01:32:12.927Z