Parameter study of decaying magnetohydrodynamic turbulence.

It is well known that helical magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence exhibits an inverse transfer of magnetic energy from small to large scales, which is related to the approximate conservation of magnetic helicity. Recently, several numerical investigations noticed the existence of an inverse energy transfer also in nonhelical MHD flows. We run a set of fully resolved direct numerical simulations and perform a wide parameter study of the inverse energy transfer and the decaying laws of helical and nonhelical MHD. Our numerical results show only a small inverse transfer of energy that grows as with increasing Prandtl number (Pm). This latter feature may have interesting consequences for cosmic magnetic field evolution. Additionally, we find that the decaying laws E∼t^{-p} are independent of the scale separation and depend solely on Pm and Re. In the helical case we measure a dependence of the form p_{b}≈0.6+14/Re. We also make a comparison between our results and previous literature and discuss the possible reason for the observed disagreements.

Detecting Microbiology in the Upper Atmosphere: Relative-Velocity Filtered Sampling.

The purpose of this article is to reopen from a practical perspective the question of the extent in altitude of Earth's biosphere. We make a number of different suggestions for how searches for biological material could be conducted in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere, colloquially referred to as the "ignore-osphere" because it has been generally ignored in the meteorological community compared to other regions. Relatively recent technological advances such as CubeSats in very low Earth orbit or more standard approaches such as the rocket-borne MAGIC meteoric smoke particle sampler are shown as potentially viable for sampling biological material in the ignore-osphere. The issue of contamination is discussed, and a potential solution to the problem is proposed by means of a new detector design that filters for particles based on their size and relative velocity to the detector.

Information production in homogeneous isotropic turbulence.

We study the Reynolds number scaling of the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy and attractor dimension for three-dimensional homogeneous isotropic turbulence through the use of direct numerical simulation. To do so, we obtain Lyapunov spectra for a range of different Reynolds numbers by following the divergence of a large number of orthogonal fluid trajectories. We find that the attractor dimension grows with the Reynolds number as Re^{2.35} with this exponent being larger than predicted by either dimensional arguments or intermittency models. The distribution of Lyapunov exponents is found to be finite around λ≈0 contrary to a possible divergence suggested by Ruelle. The relevance of the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy and Lyapunov spectra in comparing complex physical systems is discussed.

Fully resolved array of simulations investigating the influence of the magnetic Prandtl number on magnetohydrodynamic turbulence.

We explore the effect of the magnetic Prandtl number Pm on energy and dissipation in fully resolved direct numerical simulations of steady-state, mechanically forced, homogeneous magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in the range 1/32

Chaotic Properties of a Turbulent Isotropic Fluid.

By tracking the divergence of two initially close trajectories in phase space in an Eulerian approach to forced turbulence, the relation between the maximal Lyapunov exponent λ and the Reynolds number Re is measured using direct numerical simulations, performed on up to 2048^{3} collocation points. The Lyapunov exponent is found to solely depend on the Reynolds number with λ∝Re^{0.53} and that after a transient period the divergence of trajectories grows at the same rate at all scales. Finally a linear divergence is seen that is dependent on the energy forcing rate. Links are made with other chaotic systems.

Space Dust Collisions as a Planetary Escape Mechanism.

It is observed that hypervelocity space dust, which is continuously bombarding Earth, creates immense momentum flows in the atmosphere. Some of this fast space dust inevitably will interact with the atmospheric system, transferring energy and moving particles around, with various possible consequences. This paper examines, with supporting estimates, the possibility that by way of collisions the Earth-grazing component of space dust can facilitate planetary escape of atmospheric particles, whether they are atoms and molecules that form the atmosphere or larger-sized particles. An interesting outcome of this collision scenario is that a variety of particles that contain telltale signs of Earth's organic story, including microbial life and life-essential molecules, may be "afloat" in Earth's atmosphere. The present study assesses the capability of this space dust collision mechanism to propel some of these biological constituents into space. Key Words: Hypervelocity space dust-Collision-Planetary escape-Atmospheric constituents-Microbial life. Astrobiology 17, 1274-1282.

Reynolds-number dependence of the dimensionless dissipation rate in homogeneous magnetohydrodynamic turbulence.

This paper examines the behavior of the dimensionless dissipation rate C_{ɛ} for stationary and nonstationary magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in the presence of external forces. By combining with previous studies for freely decaying MHD turbulence, we obtain here both the most general model equation for C_{ɛ} applicable to homogeneous MHD turbulence and a comprehensive numerical study of the Reynolds number dependence of the dimensionless total energy dissipation rate at unity magnetic Prandtl number. We carry out a series of medium to high resolution direct numerical simulations of mechanically forced stationary MHD turbulence in order to verify the predictions of the model equation for the stationary case. Furthermore, questions of nonuniversality are discussed in terms of the effect of external forces as well as the level of cross- and magnetic helicity. The measured values of the asymptote C_{ɛ,∞} lie between 0.193≤C_{ɛ,∞}≤0.268 for free decay, where the value depends on the initial level of cross- and magnetic helicities. In the stationary case we measure C_{ɛ,∞}=0.223.

Knotty inflation and the dimensionality of spacetime.

We suggest a structure for the vacuum comprised of a network of tightly knotted/linked flux tubes formed in a QCD-like cosmological phase transition and show that such a network can drive cosmological inflation. As the network can be topologically stable only in three space dimensions, this scenario provides a dynamical explanation for the existence of exactly three large spatial dimensions in our Universe.

Warm Little Inflaton.

We show that inflation can naturally occur at a finite temperature T>H that is sustained by dissipative effects, when the inflaton field corresponds to a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson of a broken gauge symmetry. Similar to the Little Higgs scenarios for electroweak symmetry breaking, the flatness of the inflaton potential is protected against both quadratic divergences and the leading thermal corrections. We show that, nevertheless, nonlocal dissipative effects are naturally present and are able to sustain a nearly thermal bath of light particles despite the accelerated expansion of the Universe. As an example, we discuss the dynamics of chaotic warm inflation with a quartic potential and show that the associated observational predictions are in very good agreement with the latest Planck results. This model constitutes the first realization of warm inflation requiring only a small number of fields; in particular, the inflaton is directly coupled to just two light fields.

Magnetic helicity and the evolution of decaying magnetohydrodynamic turbulence.

Ensemble-averaged high resolution direct numerical simulations of reverse spectral transfer are presented, extending on the many single realization numerical studies done up to now. This identifies this type of spectral transfer as a statistical property of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence and thus permits reliable numerical exploration of its dynamics. The magnetic energy decay exponent from these ensemble runs has been determined to be nE=(0.47±0.03)+(13.9±0.8)/Rλ for initially helical magnetic fields. We show that even after removing the Lorentz force term in the momentum equation, thus decoupling it from the induction equation, reverse spectral transfer still persists. The induction equation is now linear with an externally imposed velocity field, thus amenable to numerous analysis techniques. A new door has opened for analyzing reverse spectral transfer, with various ideas discussed.

Eulerian field-theoretic closure formalisms for fluid turbulence.

The formalisms of Wyld [Ann. Phys. 14, 143 (1961)] and Martin, Siggia, and Rose (MSR) [Phys. Rev. A 8, 423 (1973)] address the closure problem of a statistical treatment of homogeneous isotropic turbulence (HIT) based on techniques primarily developed for quantum field theory. In the Wyld formalism, there is a well-known double-counting problem, for which an ad hoc solution was suggested by Lee [Ann. Phys. 32, 292 (1965)]. We show how to implement this correction in a more natural way from the basic equations of the formalism. This leads to what we call the Improved Wyld-Lee Renormalized Perturbation Theory. MSR had noted that their formalism had more vertex functions than Wyld's formalism and based on this felt Wyld's formalism was incorrect. However a careful comparison of both formalisms here shows that the Wyld formalism follows a different procedure to that of the MSR formalism and so the treatment of vertex corrections appears in different ways in the two formalisms. Taking that into account, along with clarifications made to both formalisms, we find that they are equivalent and we demonstrate this up to fourth order.

Gauge symmetry and Slavnov-Taylor identities for randomly stirred fluids.

The path integral for randomly forced incompressible fluids is shown to have an underlying Becchi-Rouet-Stora (BRS) symmetry as a consequence of Galilean invariance. This symmetry must be respected to have a consistent generating functional, free from both an overall infinite factor and spurious relations amongst correlation functions. We present a procedure for respecting this BRS symmetry, akin to gauge fixing in quantum field theory. Relations are derived between correlation functions of this gauge-fixed, BRS symmetric theory, analogous to the Slavnov-Taylor identities of quantum field theory.

Galilean invariance and homogeneous anisotropic randomly stirred flows.

The Ward-Takahashi identities for incompressible flow implied by Galilean invariance are derived for the randomly forced Navier-Stokes equation, in which both the mean and fluctuating velocity components are explicitly present. The consequences of the Galilean invariance for the vertex renormalization are drawn from this identity.