2002/03/20 by Steven A. Balbus, John F. Hawley · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph
published as Lect.Notes Phys. 614 (2003) 329-350 · To appear in ``Turbulence and Magnetic Fields in Astrophysics,'' eds. E. Falgarone and T. Passot, Lecture Notes in Physics, 20 pages
arxiv created 2002/03/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We review numerical simulations of MHD turbulence. The last decade has witnessed fundamental advances both in the technical capabilities of direct numerical simulation, and in our understanding of key physical processes. Magnetic fields tap directly into the free energy sources in a sufficiently ionized gas. The result is that adverse angular velocity and adverse temperature gradients, not the classical angular momentum and entropy gradients, destabilize laminar and stratified flow. This has profound consequences for astrophysical accretion flows, and has opened the door to a new era of numerical simulation experiments.