Broken symmetry in ideal magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

Abstract

A numerical study of the long-time evolution of a number of cases of inviscid, isotropic, incompressible, three-dimensional fluid, and magnetofluid turbulence has been completed. The results confirm that ideal magnetohydrodynamic turbulence is nonergodic if there is no external magnetic field present. This is due essentially to a canonical symmetry being broken in an arbitrary dynamical representation. The broken symmetry manifests itself as a coherent structure, i.e., a nonzero time-averaged part of the turbulent magnetic field. The coherent structure is observed, in one case, to contain about 18% of the total energy.