Nested polyhedra model of isotropic magnetohydrodynamic turbulence.

Abstract

A nested polyhedra model has been developed for magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. Driving only the velocity field at large scales with random, divergence-free forcing results in a clear, stationary k^{-5/3} spectrum for both kinetic and magnetic energies. Since the model naturally effaces disparate scale interactions, does not have a guide field, and avoids injecting any sign of helicity by random forcing, the resulting three-dimensional k spectrum is statistically isotropic. The strengths and weaknesses of the model are demonstrated by considering large or small magnetic Prandtl numbers. It was also observed that the timescale for the equipartition offset with those of the smallest scales shows a k^{-1/2} scaling.