Turbulent viscosity and effective magnetic Prandtl number from simulations of isotropically forced turbulence


Abstract in English

(abridged) Context: Turbulent diffusion of large-scale flows and magnetic fields play major roles in many astrophysical systems. Aims: Our goal is to compute turbulent viscosity and magnetic diffusivity, relevant for diffusing large-scale flows and magnetic fields, respectively, and their ratio, the turbulent magnetic Prandtl number, ${rm Pm}_{rm t}$, for isotropically forced homogeneous turbulence. Methods: We use simulations of forced turbulence in fully periodic cubes composed of isothermal gas with an imposed large-scale sinusoidal shear flow. Turbulent viscosity is computed either from the resulting Reynolds stress or from the decay rate of the large-scale flow. Turbulent magnetic diffusivity is computed using the test-field method. The scale dependence of the coefficients is studied by varying the wavenumber of the imposed sinusoidal shear and test fields. Results: We find that turbulent viscosity and magnetic diffusivity are in general of the same order of magnitude. Furthermore, the turbulent viscosity depends on the fluid Reynolds number (${rm Re}$) and scale separation ratio of turbulence. The scale dependence of the turbulent viscosity is found to be well approximated by a Lorentzian. The results for the turbulent transport coefficients appear to converge at sufficiently high values of ${rm Re}$ and the scale separation ratio. However, a weak decreasing trend is found even at the largest values of ${rm Re}$. The turbulent magnetic Prandtl number converges to a value that is slightly below unity for large ${rm Re}$ whereas for small ${rm Re}$, we find values between 0.5 and 0.6. Conclusions: The turbulent magnetic diffusivity is in general consistently higher than the turbulent viscosity. The actual value of ${rm Pm}_{rm t}$ found from the simulations ($approx0.9ldots0.95$) at large ${rm Re}$ and scale separation ratio is higher than any of the analytic predictions.

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