On Exact Laws in Incompressible Hall Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence

Abstract

A comparison is made between several existing exact laws in incompressible Hall magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in order to show their equivalence, despite stemming from different mathematical derivations. Using statistical homogeneity, we revisit the law proposed by Hellinger et al. and show that it can be written, after being corrected by a multiplicative factor, in a more compact form implying only flux terms expressed as increments of the turbulent fields. The Hall contribution of this law is tested and compared to other exact laws derived by Galtier and Banerjee & Galtier using direct numerical simulations of three-dimensional electron MHD turbulence with a moderate mean magnetic field. We show that the studied laws are equivalent in the inertial range, thereby offering several choices on the formulation to use depending on the needs. The expressions that depend explicitly on a mean (guide) field may lead to residual errors in estimating the energy cascade rate; however, we demonstrate that this guide field can be removed from these laws after mathematical manipulation. Therefore, it is recommended to use an expression independent of the mean guide field to analyze numerical or in situ spacecraft data.