Directional and scale-dependent statistics of quasi-static magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

Abstract

Anisotropy and intermittency of quasi-static magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in an imposed magnetic field are examined, using three-dimensional orthonormal wavelet analysis. Wavelets are an efficient tool to examine directional scale-dependent statistics, since they are based on well-localized functions in space, scale and direction. The analysis is applied to two turbulent MHD flows computed by direct numerical simulation with 512 3 grid points and with different intensities of the imposed magnetic field. It is found that the imposed magnetic field plays an important role on the amplification of anisotropy and intermittency of the flow.