Evidence accumulated over the past several decades indicates that a large-scale applied (dc) magnetic field imposes a preferred direction on turbulence, and thus plays an important role in plasma diffusion [1], energetic particle scattering [2], and plasma heating [3–5]. Each of these in turn may significantly influence large-scale flows and structure [6–8]. The interplay between turbulence and...

We study strongly turbulent windtunnel flows with controlled anisotropy. Using a recent formalism based on angular momentum and the irreducible representations of the SO(3) rotation group, we attempt to extract this anisotropy from the angular dependence of second-order structure functions. Our instrumentation allows a measurement of both the separation and the angle dependence of the structure...

A model for homogeneous anisotropic incompressible turbulence is proposed. The model generalizes the GISS model of homogeneous isotropic turbulence; the generalization involves the solution of the GISS equations along a set of integration paths in wavenumber (k-) space. In order to make the problem tractable, these integration paths (“cascade lines”) must be chosen in such a way that the behavi...

A relationship between power anisotropy and wavevector anisotropy in turbulent fluctuations is derived. This can be used to interpret plasma turbulence measurements, for example in the solar wind. If fluctuations are anisotropic in shape then the ion gyroscale break point in spectra in the directions parallel and perpendicular to the magnetic field would not occur at the same frequency, and sim...

Goldreich-Sridhar model of incompressible turbulence provides an elegant approach to describing strong MHD turbulence. It relies on the fact that interacting Alfvénic waves are independent and have random polarization. However, in case of strong interaction a spontaneous local assymetry can arise. We used direct numerical simulations to show that polarization alignment occurs and it grows large...