Spectrum of weak MHD turbulence

ORAL

Abstract

Turbulence of magnetohydrodynamic waves in nature and in the laboratory is generally cross-helical or non-balanced, in that the energies of Afv\'en waves moving in opposite directions along the guide magnetic field are unequal. We propose that such turbulence spontaneously generates a condensate of the residual energy $E_v-E_b$ at small field-parallel wave numbers. As a result, the energy spectra of counter-propagating Alfv\'en waves are generally not scale-invariant. In the limit of infinite Reynolds number, the universality is asymptotically restored at large wave numbers, and both spectra attain the scaling $E(k)\propto k_{\perp}^{-2}$.

*Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Grant No. DE-FG02-07ER54932, and by the NSF Center for Magnetic Self-Organization in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas at the UW-Madison.

Authors

  • Stanislav Boldyrev

    • University of Wisconsin-Madison
    • U. Wisconsin-Madison
  • Jean Carlos Perez

    • University of Wisconsin-Madison
    • Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
    • U. Wisconsin-Madison