1 research outputs found
Spectral Properties of Compressible Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence from Numerical Simulations
We analyze the spectral properties of driven, supersonic compressible
magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence obtained via high-resolution numerical
experiments, for application to understanding the dynamics of giant molecular
clouds. Via angle-averaged power spectra, we characterize the transfer of
energy from the intermediate, driving scales down to smaller dissipative
scales, and also present evidence for inverse cascades that achieve
modal-equipartition levels on larger spatial scales. Investigating compressive
versus shear modes separately, we evaluate their relative total power, and find
that as the magnetic field strength decreases, (1) the shear fraction of the
total kinetic power decreases, and (2) slopes of power-law fits over the
inertial range steepen. To relate to previous work on incompressible MHD
turbulence, we present qualitative and quantitative measures of the
scale-dependent spectral anisotropy arising from the shear-Alfv\'{e}n cascade,
and show how these vary with changing mean magnetic field strength. Finally, we
propose a method for using anisotropy in velocity centroid maps as a diagnostic
of the mean magnetic field strength in observed cloud cores.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures; Ap.J., accepte