Rotating MHD turbulence

Sergey Nazarenko
sergey.nazarenko@unice.fr
Université Côte d'Azur, INPHYNI, CNRS, 1361 route des lucioles, 06560 Valbonne, France
Turbulence in rotating Magneto-hydrodynamic systems is studied theoretically and numerically. In the linear limit, when the velocity and magnetic perturbations are small, the system supports two types of waves. When the rotation effects are stronger than the ones of the external magnetic field, one of these waves contains most of the kinetic energy (inertial wave) and the other--most of the magnetic energy (magnetostrophic wave). The weak wave turbulence (WWT) theory for decoupled inertial and magnetospheric wave systems was previously derived by Galtier (2014). In the present paper, we derive theory of strong turbulence for such waves based on the critical balance (CB) approach conjecturing that the linear and nonlinear timescales are of similar magnitudes in a wide range of turbulent scales. Regimes of weak and strong wave turbulence are simulated numerically. The results appear to be in good agreement with the WWT and CB predictions, particularly for the exponents of the kinetic and magnetic energy spectra.