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Updated: Jun 28, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Anisotropic scaling of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence
Timothy S Horbury1, Miriam Forman, Sean Oughton
1The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom. t.horbury@imperial.ac.uk
Abstract:
We present a quantitative estimate of the anisotropic power and scaling of magnetic field fluctuations in inertial range magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, using a novel wavelet technique applied to spacecraft measurements in the solar wind. We show for the first time that, when the local magnetic field direction is parallel to the flow, the spacecraft-frame spectrum has a spectral index near 2. This can be interpreted as the signature of a population of fluctuations in field-parallel wave numbers with a k(-2)_(||) spectrum but is also consistent with the presence of a "critical balance" style turbulent cascade. We also find, in common with previous studies, that most of the power is contained in wave vectors at large angles to the local magnetic field and that this component of the turbulence has a spectral index of 5/3.
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