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Updated: May 16, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking of Hall magnetohydrodynamic turbulence
Romain Meyrand1, Sébastien Galtier
1Université Paris-Sud, Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, UMR 8617, Bâtiment 121, F-91405 Orsay, France.
Abstract:
Hall magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) is investigated through three-dimensional direct numerical simulations. We show that the Hall effect induces a spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking of the turbulent dynamics. The normalized magnetic polarization is introduced to separate the right- (R) and left-handed (L) fluctuations. A classical k(-7/3) spectrum is found at small scales for R magnetic fluctuations which corresponds to the electron MHD prediction. A spectrum compatible with k(-11/3) is obtained at large-scales for the L magnetic fluctuations; we call this regime the ion MHD. These results are explained heuristically by rewriting the Hall MHD equations in a succinct vortex dynamical form. Applications to solar wind turbulence are discussed.
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