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We solve for the motion of charged particles in a helical time-periodic ABC (Arnold-Beltrami-Childress) magnetic field. The magnetic field lines of a stationary ABC field with coefficients A=B=C=1 are chaotic, and we show that the motion of a charged particle in such a field is also chaotic at late times with positive Lyapunov exponent. We further show that in time-periodic ABC fields, the kinetic energy of a charged particle can increase indefinitely with time. At late times the mean kinetic energy grows as a power law in time with an exponent that approaches unity. For an initial distribution of particles, whose kinetic energy is uniformly distributed within some interval, the probability density function of kinetic energy is, at late times, close to a Gaussian but with steeper tails.

Magnetic field generation on scales that are large compared with the scale of the turbulent eddies is known to be possible via the so-called α effect when the turbulence is helical and if the domain is large enough for the α effect to dominate over turbulent diffusion. Using three-dimensional turbulence simulations, we show that the energy of the resulting mean magnetic field of the saturated state increases linearly with the product of normalized helicity and the ratio of domain scale to eddy scale, provided this product exceeds a critical value of around unity. This implies that large-scale dynamo action commences when the normalized helicity is larger than the inverse scale ratio. Our results show that the emergence of small-scale dynamo action does not have any noticeable effect on the large-scale dynamo. Recent findings by Pietarila Graham et al. [Phys. Rev. E 85, 066406 (2012)] of a smaller minimal helicity may be an artifact due to the onset of small-scale dynamo action at large magnetic Reynolds numbers. However, the onset of large-scale dynamo action is difficult to establish when the kinetic helicity is small. Instead of random forcing, they used an ABC flow with time-dependent phases. We show that such dynamos saturate prematurely in a way that is reminiscent of inhomogeneous dynamos with internal magnetic helicity fluxes. Furthermore, even for very low fractional helicities, such dynamos display large-scale fields that change direction, which is uncharacteristic of turbulent dynamos.

We study spontaneous breakdown of chiral symmetry during the nonlinear evolution of the Tayler instability. We start with an initial steady state of zero helicity. Within linearized perturbation calculations, helical perturbations of this initial state have the same growth rate for either sign of helicity. Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of the fully nonlinear equations, however, show that an infinitesimal excess of one sign of helicity in the initial perturbation gives rise to a saturated helical state. We further show that this symmetry breaking can be described by weakly nonlinear finite-amplitude equations with undetermined coefficients which can be deduced solely from symmetry consideration. By fitting solutions of the amplitude equations to data from DNS, we further determine the coefficients of the amplitude equations.

In two-dimensional forced Navier-Stokes turbulence, energy cascades to the largest scales in the system to form a pair of coherent vortices known as the Bose condensate. We show, both numerically and analytically, that the energy condensation saturates and the system reaches a statistically stationary state. The time scale of saturation is inversely proportional to the viscosity and the saturation energy level is determined by both the viscosity and the force. We further show that, without sufficient resolution to resolve the small-scale enstrophy spectrum, numerical simulations can give a spurious result for the saturation energy level. We also find that the movement of the condensate is similar to the motion of an inertial particle with an effective drag force. Furthermore, we show that the profile of the saturated coherent vortices can be described by a Gaussian core with exponential wings.

Using mean-field theory, we compute the evolution of the magnetic field in a cylinder with outer perfectly conducting boundaries and imposed axial magnetic and electric fields. The thus injected magnetic helicity in the system can be redistributed by magnetic helicity fluxes down the gradient of the local current helicity of the small-scale magnetic field. A weak reversal of the axial magnetic field is found to be a consequence of the magnetic helicity flux in the system. Such fluxes are known to alleviate so-called catastrophic quenching of the α effect in astrophysical applications. A stronger field reversal can be obtained if there is also a significant kinetic α effect. Application to the reversed field pinch in plasma confinement devices is discussed.

Using different analytical methods (the quasilinear approach, the path-integral technique, and the tau-relaxation approximation) we develop a comprehensive mean-field theory for a pumping effect of the mean magnetic field in homogeneous nonrotating helical turbulence with imposed large-scale shear. The effective pumping velocity is proportional to the product of α effect and large-scale vorticity associated with the shear, and causes a separation of the toroidal and poloidal components of the mean magnetic field along the direction of the mean vorticity. We also perform direct numerical simulations of sheared turbulence in different ranges of hydrodynamic and magnetic Reynolds numbers and use a kinematic test-field method to determine the effective pumping velocity. The results of the numerical simulations are in agreement with the theoretical predictions.

Certain aspects of the mean-field theory of turbulent passive scalar transport and of mean-field electrodynamics are considered with particular emphasis on aspects of compressible fluids. It is demonstrated that the total mean-field diffusivity for passive scalar transport in a compressible flow may well be smaller than the molecular diffusivity. This is in full analogy to an old finding regarding the magnetic mean-field diffusivity in an electrically conducting turbulently moving compressible fluid. These phenomena occur if the irrotational part of the motion dominates the vortical part, the Péclet or magnetic Reynolds number is not too large, and, in addition, the variation of the flow pattern is slow. For both the passive scalar and the magnetic cases several further analytical results on mean-field diffusivities and related quantities found within the second-order correlation approximation are presented, as well as numerical results obtained by the test-field method, which applies independently of this approximation. Particular attention is paid to nonlocal and noninstantaneous connections between the turbulence-caused terms and the mean fields. Two examples of irrotational flows, in which interesting phenomena in the above sense occur, are investigated in detail. In particular, it is demonstrated that the decay of a mean scalar in a compressible fluid under the influence of these flows can be much slower than without any flow, and can be strongly influenced by the so-called memory effect, that is, the fact that the relevant mean-field coefficients depend on the decay rates themselves.

Evidence for the parity-breaking nature of the magnetic buoyancy instability in a stably stratified gas is reported. In the absence of rotation, no helicity is produced, but the nonhelical state is found to be unstable to small helical perturbations during the development of the instability. The parity-breaking nature of this magnetohydrodynamic instability appears to be the first of its kind and has properties similar to those in chiral symmetry breaking in biochemistry. Applications to the production of mean fields in galaxy clusters are discussed.

We present calculations of the relaxation of magnetic field structures that have the shape of particular knots and links. A set of helical magnetic flux configurations is considered, which we call n-foil knots of which the trefoil knot is the most primitive member. We also consider two nonhelical knots; namely, the Borromean rings as well as a single interlocked flux rope that also serves as the logo of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India. The field decay characteristics of both configurations is investigated and compared with previous calculations of helical and nonhelical triple-ring configurations. Unlike earlier nonhelical configurations, the present ones cannot trivially be reduced via flux annihilation to a single ring. For the n-foil knots the decay is described by power laws that range form t(-2/3) to t(-1/3), which can be as slow as the t(-1/3) behavior for helical triple-ring structures that were seen in earlier work. The two nonhelical configurations decay like t(-1), which is somewhat slower than the previously obtained t(-3/2) behavior in the decay of interlocked rings with zero magnetic helicity. We attribute the difference to the creation of local structures that contain magnetic helicity which inhibits the field decay due to the existence of a lower bound imposed by the realizability condition. We show that net magnetic helicity can be produced resistively as a result of a slight imbalance between mutually canceling helical pieces as they are being driven apart. We speculate that higher order topological invariants beyond magnetic helicity may also be responsible for slowing down the decay of the two more complicated nonhelical structures mentioned above.

Direct numerical simulations and mean-field theory are used to model reactive front propagation in a turbulent medium. In the mean-field approach, memory effects of turbulent diffusion are taken into account to estimate the front speed in cases in which the Damköhler number is large. This effect is found to saturate the front speed to values comparable with the speed of the turbulent motions. By comparing with direct numerical simulations, it is found that the effective correlation time is much shorter than for nonreacting flows. The nonlinearity of the reaction term is found to make the front speed slightly faster.

The turbulent diffusivity tensor is determined for linear shear-flow turbulence using numerical simulations. For moderately strong shear, the diagonal components are found to increase quadratically with Peclet and Reynolds numbers below about 10 and then become constant. The diffusivity tensor is found to have components proportional to the symmetric and antisymmetric parts of the velocity gradient matrix, as well as products of these. All components decrease with the wave number of the mean field in a Lorentzian fashion. The components of the diffusivity tensor are found not to depend significantly on the presence of helicity in the turbulence. The signs of the leading terms in the expression for the diffusion tensor are found to be in good agreement with estimates based on a simple closure assumption.

The resistive decay of chains of three interlocked magnetic flux rings is considered. Depending on the relative orientation of the magnetic field in the three rings, the late-time decay can be either fast or slow. Thus, the qualitative degree of tangledness is less important than the actual value of the linking number or, equivalently, the net magnetic helicity. Our results do not suggest that invariants of higher order than that of the magnetic helicity need to be considered to characterize the decay of the field.

Simulations of stochastically forced shear-flow turbulence in a shearing-periodic domain are used to study the spontaneous generation of large-scale flow patterns in the direction perpendicular to the plane of the shear. Based on an analysis of the resulting large-scale velocity correlations it is argued that the mechanism behind this phenomenon could be the mean-vorticity dynamo effect pioneered by Elperin, Kleeorin, and Rogachevskii [Phys. Rev. E 68, 016311 (2003)]. This effect is based on the anisotropy of the eddy viscosity tensor. One of its components may be able to replenish cross-stream mean flows by acting upon the streamwise component of the mean flow. Shear, in turn, closes the loop by acting upon the cross-stream mean flow to produce stronger streamwise mean flows. The diagonal component of the eddy viscosity is found to be of the order of the rms turbulent velocity divided by the wave number of the energy-carrying eddies.

A simple explicit example of a Roberts-type dynamo is given in which the alpha effect of mean-field electrodynamics exists in spite of pointwise vanishing kinetic helicity of the fluid flow. In this way, it is shown that alpha-effect dynamos do not necessarily require nonzero kinetic helicity. A mean-field theory of Roberts-type dynamos is established within the framework of the second-order correlation approximation. In addition, numerical solutions of the original dynamo equations are given that are independent of any approximation of that kind. Both theory and numerical results demonstrate the possibility of dynamo action in the absence of kinetic helicity.

The dimensionless kinetic energy dissipation rate C(epsilon) is estimated from numerical simulations of statistically stationary isotropic box turbulence that is slightly compressible. The Taylor microscale Reynolds number (Re(lambda)) range is 20< or approximately equal to Re(lambda) < or approximately equal to 220 and the statistical stationarity is achieved with a random phase forcing method. The strong Re(lambda) dependence of C(epsilon) abates when Re(lambda) approximately 100 after which C(epsilon) slowly approaches approximately 0.5, a value slightly different from previously reported simulations but in good agreement with experimental results. If C(epsilon) is estimated at a specific time step from the time series of the quantities involved it is necessary to account for the time lag between energy injection and energy dissipation. Also, the resulting value can differ from the ensemble averaged value by up to +/-30%. This may explain the spread in results from previously published estimates of C(epsilon).

Nonhelical hydromagnetic turbulence with an externally imposed magnetic field is investigated using direct numerical simulations. It is shown that the imposed magnetic field lowers the spectral magnetic energy in the inertial range. This is explained by a suppression of the small scale dynamo. At large scales, however, the spectral magnetic energy increases with increasing imposed field strength for moderately strong fields, and decreases only slightly for even stronger fields. The presence of Alfve n waves is explicitly confirmed by monitoring the evolution of magnetic field and velocity at one point. The frequency omega agrees with v(A) k(1) , where v(A) is the Alfve n speed and k(1) is the smallest wave number in the box.

Numerical turbulence with hyperviscosity is studied and compared with direct simulations using ordinary viscosity and data from wind tunnel experiments. It is shown that the inertial range scaling is similar in all three cases. Furthermore, the bottleneck effect is approximately equally broad (about one order of magnitude) in these cases and only its height is increased in the hyperviscous case-presumably as a consequence of the steeper decent of the spectrum in the hyperviscous subrange. The mean normalized dissipation rate is found to be in agreement with both wind tunnel experiments and direct simulations. The structure function exponents agree with the She-Leveque model. Decaying turbulence with hyperviscosity still gives the usual t(-1.25) decay law for the kinetic energy, and also the bottleneck effect is still present and about equally strong.

In helical hydromagnetic turbulence with an imposed magnetic field (which is constant in space and time) the magnetic helicity of the field within a periodic domain is no longer an invariant of the ideal equations. Alternatively, there is a generalized magnetic helicity that is an invariant of the ideal equations. It is shown that this quantity is not gauge invariant and that it can therefore not be used in practice. Instead, the evolution equation of the magnetic helicity of the field describing the deviation from the imposed field is shown to be a useful tool. It is demonstrated that this tool can determine steady state quenching of the alpha-effect. A simple three-scale model is derived to describe the evolution of the magnetic helicity and to predict its sign as a function of the imposed field strength. The results of the model agree favorably with simulations.

Decaying turbulence is studied numerically using as initial condition a random flow whose shell-integrated energy spectrum increases with wave number k like k(q). Alternatively, initial conditions are generated from a driven turbulence simulation by simply stopping the driving. It is known that the dependence of the decaying energy spectrum on wave number, time, and viscosity can be collapsed onto a unique scaling function that depends only on two parameters. This is confirmed using three-dimensional simulations and the dependence of the scaling function on its two arguments is determined.

Nonhelical hydromagnetic forced turbulence is investigated using large scale simulations on up to 256 processors and 1024(3) mesh points. The magnetic Prandtl number is varied between 1/8 and 30, although in most cases it is unity. When the magnetic Reynolds number is based on the inverse forcing wave number, the critical value for dynamo action is shown to be around 35 for magnetic Prandtl number of unity. For small magnetic Prandtl numbers we find the critical magnetic Reynolds number to increase with decreasing magnetic Prandtl number. The Kazantsev k(3/2) spectrum for magnetic energy is confirmed for the kinematic regime, i.e., when nonlinear effects are still unimportant and when the magnetic Prandtl number is unity. In the nonlinear regime, the energy budget converges for large Reynolds numbers (around 1000) such that for our parameters about 70% is in kinetic energy and about 30% is in magnetic energy. The energy dissipation rates are converged to 30% viscous dissipation and 70% resistive dissipation. Second-order structure functions of the Elsasser variables give evidence for a k(-5/3) spectrum. Nevertheless, the three-dimensional spectrum is close to k(-3/2), but we argue that this is due to the bottleneck effect. The bottleneck effect is shown to be equally strong both for magnetic and nonmagnetic turbulence, but it is far weaker in one-dimensional spectra that are normally studied in laboratory turbulence. Structure function exponents for other orders are well described by the She-Leveque formula, but the velocity field is significantly less intermittent and the magnetic field is more intermittent than the Elsasser variables.

At numerical resolutions around 512(3) and above, three-dimensional energy spectra from turbulence simulations begin to show noticeably shallower spectra than k(-5/3) near the dissipation wave number ("bottleneck effect"). This effect is shown to be significantly weaker in one-dimensional spectra such as those obtained in wind tunnel turbulence. The difference can be understood in terms of the transformation between the one-dimensional and three-dimensional energy spectra under the assumption that the turbulent velocity field is isotropic. Transversal and longitudinal energy spectra are similar and can both accurately be computed from the full three-dimensional spectra. Second-order structure functions are less susceptible to the bottleneck effect and may be better suited for inferring the scaling exponent from numerical simulation data.

The principle of the two-scale dynamo experiment at the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe is closely related to that of the Roberts dynamo working with a simple fluid flow which is, with respect to proper Cartesian coordinates x, y, and z, periodic in x and y and independent of z. A modified Roberts dynamo problem is considered with a flow more similar to that in the experimental device. Solutions are calculated numerically, and on this basis an estimate of the excitation condition of the experimental dynamo is given. The modified Roberts dynamo problem is also considered in the framework of the mean-field dynamo theory, in which the crucial induction effect of the fluid motion is an anisotropic alpha effect. Numerical results are given for the dependence of the mean-field coefficients on the fluid flow rates. The excitation condition of the dynamo is also discussed within this framework. The behavior of the dynamo in the nonlinear regime, i.e., with backreaction of the magnetic field on the fluid flow, depends on the effect of the Lorentz force on the flow rates. The quantities determining this effect are calculated numerically. The results for the mean-field coefficients and the quantities describing the backreaction provide corrections to earlier results, which were obtained under simplifying assumptions.

We investigate numerically the coupled diffusion-advective type field equations originating from the canonical phase space approach to the noisy Burgers equation or the equivalent Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation in one spatial dimension. The equations support stable right hand and left hand solitons and in the low viscosity limit a long-lived soliton pair excitation. We find that two identical pair excitations scatter transparently subject to a size-dependent phase shift and that identical solitons scatter on a static soliton transparently without a phase shift. The soliton pair excitation and the scattering configurations are interpreted in terms of growing step and nucleation events in the interface growth profile. Finally, we show that growing steps perform an anomalous random walk with dynamic exponent z=3/2.

The self-excitation of magnetic field by a spiral Couette flow between two coaxial cylinders is considered. We solve numerically the fully nonlinear, three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations for magnetic Prandtl numbers P(m) (ratio of kinematic viscosity to magnetic diffusivity) between 0.14 and 10 and kinematic and magnetic Reynolds numbers up to about 2000. In the initial stage of exponential field growth (kinematic dynamo regime), we find that the dynamo switches from one distinct regime to another as the radial width delta(r)(B) of the magnetic field distribution becomes smaller than the separation of the field maximum from the flow boundary. The saturation of magnetic field growth is due to a reduction in the velocity shear resulting mainly from the azimuthally and axially averaged part of the Lorentz force, which agrees with an asymptotic result for the limit of P(m)<<1. In the parameter regime considered, the magnetic energy decreases with kinematic Reynolds number as Re-0.84, which is approximately as predicted by the nonlinear asymptotic theory (approximately Re(-1)). However, when the velocity field is maintained by a volume force (rather than by viscous stress) the dependence of magnetic energy on the kinematic Reynolds number is much weaker.