On-off intermittency and amplitude-phase synchronization in Keplerian shear flows

TL;DR

This paper investigates the development of coherent structures and their synchronization in three-dimensional magnetorotational instability simulations of accretion disks, revealing how different regimes exhibit distinct intermittent behaviors and phase coherence.

Contribution

It extends previous one-dimensional models to three-dimensional Keplerian shear flows, analyzing intermittent regimes and phase synchronization of large-scale structures.

Findings

Large-scale coherent structures exhibit high amplitude-phase synchronization.

Different intermittent regimes show distinct emergence patterns of coherent structures.

Fourier spectral entropies effectively characterize the synchronization states.

Abstract

We study the development of coherent structures in local simulations of the magnetorotational instability in accretion discs in regimes of on-off intermittency. In a previous paper [Chian et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 254102 (2010)], we have shown that the laminar and bursty states due to the on-off spatiotemporal intermittency in a one-dimensional model of nonlinear waves correspond, respectively, to nonattracting coherent structures with higher and lower degrees of amplitude-phase synchronization. In this paper we extend these results to a three-dimensional model of magnetized Keplerian shear flows. Keeping the kinetic Reynolds number and the magnetic Prandtl number fixed, we investigate two different intermittent regimes by varying the plasma beta parameter. The first regime is characterized by turbulent patterns interrupted by the recurrent emergence of a large-scale coherent structure known as two-channel flow, where the state of the system can be described by a single Fourier mode. The second regime is dominated by the turbulence with sporadic emergence of coherent structures with shapes that are reminiscent of a perturbed channel flow. By computing the Fourier power and phase spectral entropies in three-dimensions, we show that the large-scale coherent structures are characterized by a high degree of amplitude-phase synchronization.