Anisotropic fluxes and nonlocal interactions in MHD turbulence

We investigate the locality or nonlocality of the energy transfer and of the spectral interactions involved in the cascade for decaying magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flows in the presence of a uniform magnetic field $\bf B$ at various intensities. The results are based on a detailed analysis of three-dimensional numerical flows at moderate Reynold numbers. The energy transfer functions, as well as the global and partial fluxes, are examined by means of different geometrical wavenumber shells. On the one hand, the transfer functions of the two conserved Els\"asser energies $E^+$ and $E^-$ are found local in both the directions parallel ($k_\|$-direction) and perpendicular ($k_\perp$-direction) to the magnetic guide-field, whatever the ${\bf B}$-strength. On the other hand, from the flux analysis, the interactions between the two counterpropagating Els\"asser waves become nonlocal. Indeed, as the ${\bf B}$-intensity is increased, local interactions are strongly decreased and the interactions with small $k_\|$ modes dominate the cascade. Most of the energy flux in the $k_\perp$-direction is due to modes in the plane at $k_\|=0$, while the weaker cascade in the $k_\|$-direction is due to the modes with $k_\|=1$. The stronger magnetized flows tends thus to get closer to the weak turbulence limit where the three-wave resonant interactions are dominating. Hence, the transition from the strong to the weak turbulence regime occurs by reducing the number of effective modes in the energy cascade.Comment: Submitted to PR

Scaling properties of three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

The scaling properties of three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic turbulence are obtained from direct numerical simulations of decaying turbulence using $512^3$ modes. The results indicate that the turbulence does not follow the Iroshnikov-Kraichnan phenomenology.In the case of hyperresistivity, the structure functions exhibit a clear scaling range yielding absolute values of the scaling exponents $\zeta_p$. The scaling exponents agree with a modified She-Leveque model $\zeta_p=p/9 + 1 - (1/3)^{p/3}$, corresponding to Kolmogorov scaling but sheet-like geometry of the dissipative structures

Non-gaussian probability distribution functions in two dimensional Magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

Intermittency in MHD turbulence has been analyzed using high resolution 2D numerical simulations. We show that the Probability Distribution Functions (PDFs) of the fluctuations of the Elsasser fields, magnetic field and velocity field depend on the scale at hand, that is they are self-affine. The departure of the PDFs from a Gaussian function can be described through the scaling behavior of a single parameter lambda_r^2 obtained by fitting the PDFs with a given curve stemming from the analysis of a multiplicative model by Castaing et al. (1990). The scaling behavior of the parameter lambda_r^2 can be used to extract informations about the intermittency. A comparison of intermittency properties in different MHD turbulent flows is also performed.Comment: 7 pages, with 5 figure

The role of surface chemical reactivity in the stability of electronic nanodevices based on two-dimensional materials "beyond graphene" and topological insulators

Here, we examine the influence of surface chemical reactivity toward ambient gases on the performance of nanodevices based on two-dimensional materials "beyond graphene" and novel topological phases of matter. While surface oxidation in ambient conditions was observed for silicene and phosphorene with subsequent reduction of the mobility of charge carriers, nanodevices with active channels of indium selenide, bismuth chalcogenides and transition-metal dichalcogenides are stable in air. However, air-exposed indium selenide suffers of p-type doping due to water decomposition on Se vacancies, whereas the low mobility of charge carriers in transition-metal dichalcogenides increases the response time of nanodevices. Conversely, bismuth chalcogenides require a control of crystalline quality, which could represent a serious hurdle for up scaling

GPU cards as a low cost solution for efficient and fast classification of high dimensional gene expression datasets

The days when bioinformatics tools will be so reliable to become a standard aid in routine clinical diagnostics are getting very close. However, it is important to remember that the more complex and advanced bioinformatics tools become, the more performances are required by the computing platforms. Unfortunately, the cost of High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms is still prohibitive for both public and private medical practices. Therefore, to promote and facilitate the use of bioinformatics tools it is important to identify low-cost parallel computing solutions. This paper presents a successful experience in using the parallel processing capabilities of Graphical Processing Units (GPU) to speed up classification of gene expression profiles. Results show that using open source CUDA programming libraries allows to obtain a significant increase in performances and therefore to shorten the gap between advanced bioinformatics tools and real medical practic

Analysis of cancellation in two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

A signed measure analysis of two-dimensional intermittent magnetohydrodynamic turbulence is presented. This kind of analysis is performed to characterize the scaling behavior of the sign-oscillating flow structures, and their geometrical properties. In particular, it is observed that cancellations between positive and negative contributions of the field inside structures, are inhibited for scales smaller than the Taylor microscale, and stop near the dissipative scale. Moreover, from a simple geometrical argument, the relationship between the cancellation exponent and the typical fractal dimension of the structures in the flow is obtained.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures (3 .jpg not included in the latex file

Numerical study of dynamo action at low magnetic Prandtl numbers

We present a three--pronged numerical approach to the dynamo problem at low magnetic Prandtl numbers $P_M$. The difficulty of resolving a large range of scales is circumvented by combining Direct Numerical Simulations, a Lagrangian-averaged model, and Large-Eddy Simulations (LES). The flow is generated by the Taylor-Green forcing; it combines a well defined structure at large scales and turbulent fluctuations at small scales. Our main findings are: (i) dynamos are observed from $P_M=1$ down to $P_M=10^{-2}$; (ii) the critical magnetic Reynolds number increases sharply with $P_M^{-1}$ as turbulence sets in and then saturates; (iii) in the linear growth phase, the most unstable magnetic modes move to small scales as $P_M$ is decreased and a Kazantsev $k^{3/2}$ spectrum develops; then the dynamo grows at large scales and modifies the turbulent velocity fluctuations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure