Three-dimensional Iroshnikov-Kraichnan turbulence in a mean magnetic field

Roland Grappin, Wolf-Christian Müller, Andrea Verdini, Özgür Gürcan

Published 2013-12-12, updated 2014-12-13Version 2

Forced, weak MHD turbulence with guide field is shown to adopt different regimes, depending on the magnetic excess of the large forced scales. When the magnetic excess is large enough, the classical perpendicular cascade with $5/3$ scaling is obtained, while when equipartition is imposed, an isotropic $3/2$ scaling appears in all directions with respect to the mean field (\cite{2010PhRvE..82b6406G} or GM10). We show here that the $3/2$ scaling of the GM10 regime is not ruled by a small-scale cross-helicity cascade, and propose that it is a 3D extension of a perpendicular weak Iroshnikov-Kraichnan (IK) cascade. We analyze in detail the structure functions in real space and show that they closely follow the critical balance relation both in the local frame and the global frame: we show that there is no contradiction between this and the isotropic $3/2$ scaling of the spectra. We propose a scenario explaining the spectral structure of the GM10 regime, that starts with a perpendicular weak IK cascade and extends to 3D by using quasi-resonant couplings. The quasi-resonance condition happens to reduce the energy flux in the same way as is done in the weak perpendicular cascade, so leading to a $3/2$ scaling in all directions. We discuss the possible applications of these findings to solar wind turbulence.