Helicity dynamics, inverse and bi-directional cascades in fluid and MHD turbulence: A brief review

Abstract

We briefly review helicity dynamics, inverse and bi-directional cascades in fluid and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence, with an emphasis on the latter. The energy of a turbulent system, an invariant in the non-dissipative case, is transferred to small scales through nonlinear mode coupling. Fifty years ago, it was realized that, for a two-dimensional fluid, energy cascades instead to larger scales, and so does magnetic helicity in three-dimensional MHD. However, evidence obtained recently indicates that in fact, for a range of governing parameters, there are systems for which their ideal invariants can be transferred, with constant fluxes, to both the large scales and the small scales, as for MHD or rotating stratified flows, in the latter case including with quasi-geostrophic forcing. Such bi-directional, split, cascades directly affect the rate at which mixing and dissipation occur in these flows in which nonlinear eddies interact with fast waves with anisotropic dispersion laws, due for example to imposed rotation, stratification or uniform magnetic fields. The directions of cascades can be obtained in some cases through the use of phenomenological arguments, one of which we derive here following classical lines in the case of the inverse magnetic helicity cascade in electron MHD. With more highly-resolved data sets stemming from large laboratory experiments, high-performance computing and in-situ satellite observations, machine-learning tools are bringing novel perspectives to turbulence research, e.g. in helping devise new explicit sub-grid scale parameterizations, which may lead to enhanced physical insight, including in the future in the case of these new bi-directional cascades.