Formulation of scale-dependent anisotropic energy transfer and conversion in compressible MHD turbulence and implications for space and astro plasmas

Turbulent fluctuations play an important role in processes such as the solar wind heating and transport of energetic particles. We present results from 3D compressible MHD simulations of turbulence. The turbulence is highly anisotropic with respect to the background magnetic field and is dominated by perpendicular structures, consistent with the turbulence observed in typical space plasmas. While local interactions dominate the cross-scale energy transfer in isotropic turbulence, the locality of energy transfer in anisotropic turbulence remains poorly understood. We present a spatial filtering technique to calculate various scale-dependent energy transfer and conversion terms including kinetic, magnetic and pressure dilatation processes. The analysis presented here allows us to compute the anisotropic cross-scale energy fluxes and demonstrate their locality (or nonlocality). The simulations also explore the parameter space such as the plasma beta, turbulent Mach number, and driving mechanism.