Sustained Turbulence in Differentially Rotating Magnetized Fluids at Low Magnetic Prandtl Number

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that sustained turbulence can occur in low magnetic Prandtl number magnetized fluids with differential rotation, highlighting the importance of domain size and implications for astrophysical and laboratory systems.

Contribution

It is the first to show sustained turbulence at low magnetic Prandtl number in Keplerian flows without mean magnetic flux, emphasizing the role of domain size.

Findings

Sustained turbulence is possible at low magnetic Prandtl number.

Increasing vertical domain size enhances turbulence.

Implications for protostellar disks and laboratory experiments.

Abstract

We show for the first time that sustained turbulence is possible at low magnetic Prandtl number for Keplerian flows with no mean magnetic flux. Our results indicate that increasing the vertical domain size is equivalent to increasing the dynamical range between the energy injection scale and the dissipative scale. This has important implications for a large variety of differentially rotating systems with low magnetic Prandtl number such as protostellar disks and laboratory experiments.