Turbulent spectra and spectral kinks in the transition range from MHD to kinetic Alfvén turbulence

Abstract

A weakly dispersive sub-range (WDR) of kinetic Alfvén turbulence is distinguished and investigated for the first time in the context of MHD/kinetic turbulence transition. We found perpendicular wavenumber spectra ~ k^{-3} and ~ k^{-4} formed in WDR by strong and weak turbulence of kinetic Alfvén waves (KAWs), respectively. These steep WDR spectra connect shallower spectra in the MHD and strongly dispersive KAW sub-ranges, which results in a specific double-kink (2-k) pattern often seen in observed turbulent spectra. The first kink occurs where MHD turbulence transforms into weakly dispersive KAW turbulence; the second one is between weakly and strongly dispersive KAW sub-ranges. Our analysis suggests that the partial turbulence dissipation due to amplitude-dependent super-adiabatic ion heating may occur in the vicinity of the first spectral kink. A threshold-like nature of this process results in a conditional selective dissipation affecting only largest over-threshold amplitudes and decreasing intermittency in the range below the first spectral kink. Several recent counter-intuitive observational findings can be explained by the selective dissipation coupled to the nonlinear interaction among weakly dispersive KAWs.

11 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Small Scale Energy Cascade of the Solar Wind Turbulence
• Linear and Non-Linear Landau Resonance of Kinetic Alfvén Waves: Consequences for Electron Distribution and Wave Spectrum in the Solar Wind
• On the Nature of Incompressible Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence
• Is current disruption associated with an inverse cascade?

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