Two-fluid turbulence including electron inertia

ANDRÉS NAHUEL; CARLOS GONZALEZ; LUIS MARTÍN; PABLO DMITRUK; DANIEL O. GOMEZ

PHYSICS OF PLASMAS

AMER INST PHYSICS

Lugar: New York; Año: 2014 vol. 21

1070-664X

We present a full two-fluid magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) description for a completely ionized hydrogen plasma, retaining the effects of the Hall current, electron pressure and electron inertia. According to this description, each plasma species introduces a new spatial scale: the ion inertial length $lambda_{i}$ and the electron inertial length $lambda_{e}$, which are not present in the traditional MHD description. In the present paper, we seek for possible changes in the energy power spectrum in fully developed turbulent regimes, using numerical simulations of the two-fluid equations in two-and-a-half dimensions (2.5D). We have been able to reproduce different scaling laws in different spectral ranges, as it has been observed in the solar wind for the magnetic energy spectrum. At the smallest wavenumbers where plain MHD is valid, we obtain an inertial range following a Kolmogorov $k^{-5/3}$ law. For intermediate wavenumbers such that $lambda_{i}^{-1}