Magnetic turbulence in compressible fluids

Abstract

We present high resolution numerical simulations of compressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. We concentrate on studies of spectra and anisotropy of velocity and density. We describe a technique of separating different magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) modes (slow, fast and Alfven) and apply it to our simulations. For the mildly supersonic case, velocity and density show anisotropy. However, for the highly supersonic case, we observe steepening of the slow mode velocity spectrum and isotropization of density. Our present studies show that the spectrum of density gets substantially {\it flatter} than the Kolmogorov one.