Generation of compressible modes in MHD turbulence

Abstract

Astrophysical turbulence is magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) in nature. We discuss fundamental properties of MHD turbulence and in particular the generation of compressible MHD waves by Alfvénic turbulence and show that this process is inefficient. This allows us to study the evolution of different types of MHD perturbations separately. We describe how to separate MHD fluctuations into three distinct families: Alfvén, slow, and fast modes. We find that the degree of suppression of slow and fast modes production by Alfvénic turbulence depends on the strength of the mean field. We review the scaling relations of the modes in strong MHD turbulence. We show that Alfvén modes in compressible regime exhibit scalings and anisotropy similar to those in incompressible regime. Slow modes passively mimic Alfvén modes. However, fast modes exhibit isotropy and a scaling similar to that of acoustic turbulence both in high and low β plasmas. We show that our findings entail important consequences for star formation theories, cosmic ray propagation, dust dynamics, and gamma ray bursts. We anticipate many more applications of the new insight to MHD turbulence and expect more revisions of the existing paradigms of astrophysical processes as the field matures.