Cambridge Mathematical Tripos Part III (CASM)

MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS AND TURBULENCE
(24 lectures, Michaelmas Term 2005)

Alexander Schekochihin

COURSE BLOG

The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all
his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.

Michael Faraday.

Here I will post some information on the material we have covered in the past lectures, plans for the upcoming lectures, suggestions for additional reading, original references, example sheets, scheduling notices etc.

Note that my presentation will not necessarily be based on the reading suggestions below. These are not obligatory, they are given simply so that you know where to look for an alternative (and in many cases much more extensive) account of the material discussed in class.

Lecture 1 (7.10.05)  

Preview of the course (pdf), suggested reading (pdf).
Introduction: magnetic fields and turbulence in astrophysics, physics from large to small scales, universality, Richardson cascade.

Here is a wonderful illustration of turbulence as multiscale disorder: this is a paper by Yokokawa et al. describing the biggest to date direct numerical simulation of turbulence done on the Earth Simulator machine in Japan. If you look carefully at the pictures, you should start having some reservations about the qualitative picture I described in my lecture. Do ask me about these reservations.
Here is a recent talk for the general public which contains some pretty pictures of magnetic fields, turbulence and magnetic turbulence. 


Lecture 2
(10.10.05)

Kolmogorov's 1941 dimensional theory of turbulence.

Reading: Landau & Lifshitz §33 --- read this!
                Davidson-MHD §7.1.3
                Davidson-Turbulence, Chapter 5
                Frisch, Chapter 7
                Batchelor, Chapter VI
                Monin & Yaglom §21

Kolmogorov's original paper: A. N. Kolmogorov, Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR 30, 299 (1941) [reprinted Proc. Roy. Soc. A 434, 9 (1991)].
Here are two interesting historical papers:
A. M. Yaglom, Ann. Rev. Fluid Mech. 26, 1 (1994) on A. N. Kolmogorov and the founding of the Russian school of turbulence.
H. K. Moffatt,Ann. Rev. Fluid Mech. 34, 19 (2002) on G. K. Batchelor and the Cambridge school of turbulence.


Lecture 3 (12.10.05)

Particle diffusion in turbulence: exponential separation, Richardson law, turbulent diffusion.
Correlation functions.

Reading: Davidson-Turbulence §6.2.1
                Batchelor, Chapters II-III
                Monin & Yaglom §24 (particle diffusion), Chapter 6 --- the definitive account of correlation functions

A downloadable account of correlation functions in d dimensions: Appendix A in A. A. Schekochihin, S. A. Boldyrev & R. M. Kulsrud, Astrophys. J. 567, 828 (2002)(not very pedagogically written, I am afraid).
If you were intrigued by the example I gave you at the end of the lecture (the calculation of magnetic-field spectrum from Faraday Rotation in clusters), here are three original papers where the method is explained and the data analysis performed:
T. A. Enßlin & C. Vogt, Astron. Astrophys. 401, 835 (2003)

C. Vogt & T. A. Enßlin, Astron. Astrophys. 412, 373 (2003)
C. Vogt & T. A. Enßlin, Astron. Astrophys. 434, 67 (2005)

Lecture 4 (14.10.05)

Correlation functions continued: spectra.
Infrared scaling (long-range correlations).
Kolmogorov's 4/5 law: start of the derivation.

Reading: Davidson-Turbulence §8.1 (k space corr. functions)
                See reading suggestions for the next lecture

NB: There will be a seminar at CMS on 21 October, where Peter Davidson will talk about long-range correlations and decaying turbulence.

Lecture 5 (17.10.05)

The closure problem.
The 3d-order correlation function.
von Karman-Howarth equation.
Kolmogorov's 4/5 law.

Reading: Landau & Lifshitz §34
                Frisch Chapter 6
                Davidson-Turbulence §§6.2, 6.3 (the latter section treats the decay laws, which I did not cover, but you should read about them), 8.2 (dynamics in k space and closure models)
                Davidson-MHD §§7.1.4, 7.1.5 (these are more concise versions of §§6.2, 6.3 of his Turbulence book)
                Batchelor Chapter V
                McComb (on closures)

The original von Karman-Howarth paper: T. de Karman & L. Howarth, Proc. Roy. Soc. A 164, 192 (1938).
Kolmogorov's original paper on the 4/5 law:
A. N. Kolmogorov, Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR 32, 19 (1941) [reprinted Proc. Roy. Soc. A 434, 15 (1991)].

Example Sheet I (pdf) --- Note that Problems 2-4 take you step-by-step through the main results of the theory of scalar turbulence (passive scalar theory). Doing these problems is a good way to check if you understand Kolmogorov-style reasoning. Regardless of whether you planning to take the exam in the course, I urge you all to attend Examples Class I, when I will explain these results in detail.

NB: There will be a seminar today in MR14 @16:00, where François Rincon will talk about the 4/5 law in turbulent convection.

Lecture 6 (19.10.05)

Intermittency: intro, the refined similarity hypothesis.

Reading: Frisch Chapter 8; see §6.4 for detailed discussion of Landau's objection
                Davidson-Turbulence §§6.5 (intro to intermittency), 7.3 (overview of numerical results)
                Biskamp-MHD Turbulence §§7.1,7.2,7.4

Kolmogorov's original paper on the refined-similarity hypothesis: A. N. Kolmogorov, J. Fluid Mech. 13, 82 (1962) [not on the web, alas, but all back volumes of JFM can be found on the ground floor of Pavilion G].

Lecture 7 (21.10.05)

Intermittency: the lognormal model, She-Lévêque theory.

Reading: see previous lecture.

Here are some key recent papers on the She-Lévêque model of intermittency (not terribly clear except, perhaps, the last one):
Z.-S. She and E.
Lévêque, Phys. Rev. Lett. 72, 336 (1994)
B. Dubrulle
, Phys. Rev. Lett. 73, 959 (1994)
Z.-S. She and E. C. Waymire, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 262 (1995)
S. Boldyrev, Astrophys. J.569, 841 (2002)  


Lecture 8 (24.10.05)

Intermittency: summary and discussion of the She-Lévêque theory.
Extended self-similarity.

Discovery of extended self-similarity: R. Benzi et al., Phys. Rev. E 48, R29 (1993)

MHD equations: magnetic forces, the induction equation.

Reading: Davidson-MHD §§1.1-1.4, 2.1-2.6, 3.8-3.9 (equations; also 3.1-3.7 if you want to brush up on your fluid mechanics)
                Goedbloed & Poedts §4.1 (equations)
                Kulsrud §§3.1 (equations), 4.2 (forces)
                Maxwell's poetry (extracurricular)

If you would like to learn how to derive the MHD equations properly from the kinetic plasma theory, see Sturrock §§11.1-11.8,12.1 or Goedbloed & Poedts §§2.4.1, 3.
Three more references on kinetic theory are

Yu. L. Klimontovich, The Statistical Theory of Non-Equilibrium Processes in a Plasma (MIT Press 1967) --- the mathematical construction of the kinetic theory
S. I. Braginskii, Reviews of Plasma Physics 1, 205 (1965) --- original calculation of collisional transport terms (viscosity, thermal diffusivity, magnetic diffusivity)
P. Helander & D. J. Sigmar, Collisional Transport in Magnetized Plasmas (CUP 2002) --- an excellent recent monograph on collisional transport, contains everything you need to know and more!

No lectures on 26.10.05 and 28.10.05 (to be rescheduled). Next lecture on 31.10.05.

Lecture 9 (31.10.05)

Magnetic diffusion. Magnetic Reynolds number.
Flux freezing.
Zeldovich rope dynamo.

Reading: Davidson-MHD §§2.7 (diffusion), 4.1-4.3 (flux freezing)
                Sturrock §§12.2 (flux freezing), 12.3 (diffusion)
                Kulsrud §§3.2-3.3 (flux freezing and its astrophysical applications)
                Zeldovich et al. §9.1 (dynamo)

The induction equation is extremely reach: books have been written just about solutions of this equation --- such studies often have to do with the dynamo problem. We will return to some aspects of this problem in the part of the course that deals with MHD turbulence. There will be more dynamo in Prof. Proctor's course next term. In the meanwhile, if you feel you must know more now, see books by Parker, Moffatt, Childress & Gilbert from your reading list. Here are some extra dynamo books for the insatiable:

M. R. E. Proctor & A. D. Gilbert, Lectures on Solar and Planetary Dynamos(CUP 1994) --- a widely used set of lecture notes from a Newton Institute workshop
A. A. Ruzmaikin, A. M. Shukurov & D. D. Sokoloff, Magnetic Fields of Galaxies (Kluwer 1988) --- everything you ever wanted to know about the mean-field dynamo theory for galaxies
F. Krause & K.-H. Rädler, Mean-Field Magnetohydrodynamics and Dynamo Theory (Pergamon 1980) --- a VERY meticulous exposition of mean-field theory by people who invented it
V. I. Arnold & B. A. Khesin, Topological Methods in Hydrodynamics (Springer 1998) ---- their chapter on kinematic dynamo tells you how the dynamo problem might appeal to a pure mathematician

Lecture 10 (2.11.05)

Lagrangian MHD. Cauchy solution of the induction equation. Action principle.
Conservation laws: mass, momentum, energy.

Lagrangian formulation of MHD and the action principle are discussed in the excellent original paper by Newcomb:
W. A. Newcomb, Nucl. Fusion: 1962 Supplement, Part 2, p. 451 (distributed in class)
A more recent useful reference is D.
Pfirsch & R. N. Sudan, Phys. Fluids B 5, 2052 (1993)

Reading: Sturrock §§16.1-16.4 (action principle)
                Kulsrud §§4.8 (Cauchy solution), 4.3-4.5 (conservation laws), 4.7 (action principle)
                Zeldovich et al. §9.1 (dynamo)
                Goedbloed & Poedts §§4.3 (conservation laws), 4.4 (same with dissipative terms)

Lecture 11 (4.11.05)

Conservation laws: energy (completed), helicity, cross-helicity.
MHD Equilibrium. Force-free fields.  

Reading: Davidson-MHD §4.4 (helicity)
                Sturrock §13.8 (helicity), 13.1-13.7,13.10 (force-free fields)
                Kulsrud §§4.9 (cylindrical equilibria)

If you wish to read something about the energy principle, MHD stability etc., here are some pointers:
Energy principle: Kulsrud §7.2, 
Sturrock §§16.1-16.4, Davidson-MHD §6.4, Goedbloed & Poedts §§6.1-6.6 (a very extensive account of the MHD stability theory)
The original famous paper on the MHD energy principle is I. B. Bernstein, E. A. Frieman, M. D. Kruskal & R. M. Kulsrud, Proc. Roy. Soc. London A244, 17 (1958)
Instabilities: Sturrock §§15.1-15.5 (z-pinch instabilities), Kulsrud §7.3 (interchange and Parker instabilities), Goedbloed & Poedts §§7.2, 7.5, 9.4 (various fairly advanced stability calculations)
Here is an example of a very sophisticated nonlinear instability calculation based on the Lagrangian MHD formalism: S. C. Cowley & M. Artun, Phys. Reports 283, 185 (1997)

If you would like some notes on these things, ask me and I will give you a copy of last year's lecture notes/example-sheet solutions where I work out the energy principle, instabilities of the cylindrical equilibria, and the instabilities in the presence of gravity (interchange instabilities) systematically using the Lagrangian approach. 

Example Sheet II (pdf) --- examples on MHD

Lecture 12 (7.11.05)

Force-free fields completed: Woltjer theorem
MHD waves

Reading: Sturrock §§13.9 (Woltjer theorem), 14.1
               Kulsrud §§5.1-5.4
               Goedbloed & Poedts §§5.1-5.2
               Davidson-MHD §6.1

Lecture 13 (8.11.05 @ 12:00-13:00 in MR5 --- make-up lecture, note time and venue!)

MHD waves completed.
Finite-amplitude Alfvén waves. Elsässer variables.

Example Class I:  8.11.05@ 16:00-17:30 in MR4

Lecture 14 (9.11.05)

Alfvénic (anisotropic MHD) turbulence: an overview of theoretical uncertainties.

Reading: You may find this review (§§1-2) and references therein useful.

Lecture 15 (11.11.05)

Reduced MHD.
Decoupling of the Alfvén-wave cascade.

Lecture 16 (14.11.05)

Decoupling of the Alfvén-wave cascade: completed.

NB: 15.11.05 (today!) @ 13:00 in MR14 Astrophysics Lunchtime Seminar given by Eugene Parker, one of the creators of Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics

Example Class II:  15.11.05 @ 14:30-16:00 in MR15 (Note change of time!)

Lecture 17 (16.11.05)

Weak turbulence of Alfvén waves.

Reading: Zakharov, Lvov, Falkovich §§2.1.1-2.1.5 (the main points of the weak turbulence scheme; obviously, to understand everything properly, you need to read the whole book!)

Papers on weak turbulence of Alfvén waves (this is the order in which the main contributions have appeared):
S. Sridhar & P. Golreich, Astrophys. J. 432, 612 (1994) --- 4-wave theory (3-wave interactions argued empty)
D. Montgomery & W. H. Matthaeus, Astrophys. J. 447, 706 (1995) --- 3-wave interations defended
C. S. Ng & A. Bhattacharjee, Astrophys. J. 465, 845 (1996) --- 3-wave interactions demonstrated
C. S. Ng & A. Bhattacharjee, Phys. Plasmas 4, 605 (1997) --- more of the above
P. Goldreich & S. Sridhar, Astrophys. J. 485, 680 (1997) --- 3-wave interactions acknowledged and further analysed
S. Galtier et al., J. Plasma Phys. 63, 447 (2000) --- a careful calculation
A. Bhattachrjee & C. S. Ng, Astrophys. J. 548, 318 (2001) --- a numerical study
S. Galtier et al., Astrophys. J. 564, L49 (2002) --- a simpler version of their calculation (closest to what I did in class)
Y. Lithwick & P. Goldreich, Astrophys. J. 582, 1220 (2003) --- another version of the weak-turbulence calculation (plus imbalance between + and - waves), previous work reexamined


PARTY! --- For students interested in research opportunities with the Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics Group/DAMTP
Come meet members of our research group informally 17 November @ 6pm in N2 Great Court/Trinity College (Prof. Proctor's rooms)

Lecture 18 (18.11.05)

Weak turbulence of Alfvén waves.
Discussion of difficulties and unresolved issues in the Alfvén-wave turbulence.

Lecture 19
(21.11.05)

Weak turbulence completed: Zakharov transformations.
Small-scale dynamo in a linear velocity field.

Reading: My review (§3.1) and references therein.

Small-scale dynamo in a linear velocity field is analysed in Ya. B. Zeldovich et al., J. Fluid Mech. 144, 1 (1984) [all back volumes of JFM are available on the ground floor of Pavilion G].
The interpretation of their picture that I have given you is in A. A. Schekochihin et al., Astrophys. J. 612, 276 (2004)
.
The folded structure of the magnetic field is also discussed in the above paper and, on a more mathematical level, in A. Schekochihin et al., Phys. Rev. E 65, 016305 (2002).

A different, complementary, formalism for understanding field growth and structure based on quantifying flux cancellation properties of the magnetic field was developed by Ott and coworkers in 1990s.
Their work is reviewed in E. Ott, Phys. Plasmas 5, 1636 (1998), where you will also find further references.

See also the Childress & Gilbert book.

NB: 22.11.05 (Tuesday) @ 13:00 in MR14 --- I am giving an Astrophysics Lunchtime Seminar on the Alfvén and slow-wave cascades in MHD and kinetic theory of astrophysical plasma turbulence. Roughly the first half of the seminar will be similar to my Lecture 15, the rest will be an overview and discussion of the kinetic generalisation of this theory. So both those wanting a recap and those wanting to know more are welcome to attend.

Lecture 20 (23.11.05)

Small-scale dynamo in a linear velocity field.

Lecture 21 (25.11.05)

Small-scale dynamo in a linear velocity field: discussion.
The Kazantsev--Kraichnan Model.

Lecture 22 (28.11.05)

The magnetic-field spectrum in the Kazantsev model.

Statistical methods for dealing with multiplicative noise are described very thoroghly in  van Kampen's book (on your reading list)
T
he specific method of averaging that I have given you, as well as extensions to small but finite correlation times, are described in A. A. Schekochihin & R. M. Kulsrud, Phys. Plasmas 8, 4937 (2001).

Here is a (very incomplete) list of papers where Kazantsev's model of small-scale dynamo is studied in many different ways:
A. P. Kazantsev, Soviet Phys. --- JETP 26, 1031 (1968)
See references and review of subsequent work in 1980s in Chapter 9 of the Zeldovich et al. book (on your reading list) --- they do everything in x space.
R. M. Kulsrud & S. W. Anderson, Astrophys. J. 396, 606 (1992) --- a very thorough study of the spectra
A. Gruzinov, S. Cowley & R. Sudan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 4342 (1996)
--- calculation of spectrum similar to the one I did in class
I. Rogachevskii & N. Kleeorin, Phys. Rev. E 56, 417 (1997) --- the case of Pm<<1
K. Subramanian, astro-ph/9708216 --- a WKB solution in x space
M. Chertkov et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 4065 (1999) --- direct generalisation of the linear-velocity calculation (as in my lectures) to the case of random FTLEs, higher moments of B
S. A. Boldyrev & A. A. Schekochihin, Phys. Rev. E 62, 545 (2000) --- a systematic development in terms of metric tensors
A. A. Schekochihin, S. A. Boldyrev & R. M. Kulsrud, Astrophys. J. 567, 828 (2002) --- another calculation both in k and x spaces
D. Vincenzi, J. Stat. Phys. 106, 1073 (2002) --- a numerical solution, a range of Pm (from small to large) modelled
N. Kleeorin, I. Rogachevskii & D. Sokoloff, Phys. Rev. E 65, 036303 (2002) --- x-space calculation with small but finite correlation time
A. Schekochihin et al., Phys. Rev. E 65, 016305 (2002) ---  calculation of field structure in terms of field-line curvature etc.
S. Nazarenko, R. J. West & O. Zaboronski, Phys. Rev. E 68, 026311 (2003) --- higher moments in k space
R. J. West et al., Astron. Astrophys. 414, 807 (2004)--- more of the above
S. A. Boldyrev & F. Cattaneo, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 144501 (2004)--- the case of Pm<<1 revisited
 
Lecture 23 --- make-up lecture.

The magnetic-field spectrum in the Kazantsev model.

Lecture 24 (30.11.05)

Small-scale dynamo: saturation.
Isotropic MHD turbulence.
I will (hopefully) also have some time left to answer any questions that you care to ask.

Reading: My review (§3.2) and references therein.

Here are some recent theoretical papers on the saturation of small-scale dynamo (representing several different views of what happens)
K. Subramanian, Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 2957 (1999)
E. Kim, Phys. Lett. A 259, 232 (1999)
E. Kim, Phys. Plasmas 7, 1746 (2000)
S. V. Nazarenko, G. E. Falkovich, & Galtier, S., Phys. Rev. E 63, 016408 (2001)
A. A. Schekochihin et al., New J. Phys. 4, 84 (2002)
K. Subramanian, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 245003 (2003)
A. A. Schekochihin et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 084504 (2004)
A. A. Schekochihin et al., Astrophys. J. 612, 276 (2004)

 
Example Sheet III (pdf) --- examples on MHD turbulence etc.

Example Class III
will be held some time in the Lent Term.

In the meanwhile, you are welcome to come and see me if you have any difficulties/questions/thoughts/suggestions and also if you want to discuss possible Ph. D. projects on MHD turbulence, plasma astrophysics, dynamo, and on the physics of galaxy clusters (the DAMTP application deadline is 23 December). I am in town till 26 December and then from 23 January onwards.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! --- I am sure it'll mark the beginning of a brilliant career in research or whatever else you decide to do with yourself.