Effects of multiple-scale driving on turbulence statistics

Abstract

Turbulence is ubiquitous in astrophysical fluids such as the interstellar medium and the intracluster medium. In turbulence studies, it is customary to assume that fluid is driven on a single scale. However, in astrophysical fluids, there can be many different driving mechanisms that act on different scales. If there are multiple energy-injection scales, the process of energy cascade and turbulence dynamo will be different compared with the case of the single energy-injection scale. In this work, we perform three-dimensional incompressible/compressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence simulations. We drive turbulence in Fourier space in two wavenumber ranges, (large scale) and 15 ≲ k ≲ 26 (small scale). We inject different amount of energy in each range by changing the amplitude of forcing in the range. We present the time evolution of the kinetic and magnetic energy densities and discuss the turbulence dynamo in the presence of energy injections at two scales. We show how kinetic, magnetic, and density spectra are affected by the two-scale energy injections and we discuss the observational implications. In the case εL < εS , where ε L and εSare energy-injection rates at the large and small scales, respectively, our results show that even a tiny amount of large-scale energy injection can significantly change the properties of turbulence. On the other hand, when εL ≳ εS, the small-scale driving does not influence the turbulence statistics much unless εL εS. © 2014. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.