Structure of stationary strong imbalanced turbulence

Abstract

In this paper, we systematically study the spectrum and structure of incompressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence by means of high-resolution direct numerical simulations. We considered both balanced and imbalanced (cross-helical) cases and simulated sub-Alfvénic as well as trans-Alfvénic turbulence. This paper, extends numerics preliminarily reported in Beresnyak & Lazarian. We confirm that driven imbalanced turbulence has a stationary state even for high degrees of imbalance. Our major finding is that the structure of the dominant and subdominant Alfvénic components are notably different. Using the most robust observed quantities, such as the energy ratio, we believe we can reject several existing models of strong imbalanced turbulence. © 2009 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.