Nonlocal contributions to the turbulent cascade in magnetohydrodynamic plasmas.

Abstract

We present evidence for nonlocal contributions to the turbulent energy cascade in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) plasmas. Therefore, we revisit a well-known result derived directly from the MHD equations, i.e., the Politano and Pouquet law for the transfer of kinetic and magnetic energy in scale. We propose adding a term that accounts for nonlocal transfer and represents the influence of fluctuations from large scales due to the Alfvén effect. Supported by direct numerical simulations of homogeneous and isotropic MHD turbulence, we verify that in some plasma configurations, neglecting the additional nonlocal term might consistently overestimate energy dissipation rates and, thus, the contributions of turbulent energy dissipation potentially affecting solar wind heating, i.e., a central puzzle in space plasma physics that motivates the present work.