Kinetic helicity and chiral velocity modes in supernova driven turbulence

Aug 19, 2024·
James R. Beattie
James R. Beattie
· 1 min read

There is sufficient energy in supernova detonations alone to drive the turbulence in our Galaxy. However, the nature of the supernova-driven cascade, the mechanism that transports energy from the largest scales to the smallest scales, is unknown for this kind of turbulence regime, where energy flux must travel both ways because the driving happens on small scales – from large to small in a direct cascade, and from small to large in an inverse cascade. It is well known that one inverse cascade mechanism is through interacting, incompressible homochiral modes (Plunian et al. 2020; i.e., velocity modes that generate vorticity with the same handedness). In this project, we will derive a new set of energy flux transfer functions for probing the interactions between the homochiral, heterochiral and compressible modes in a turbulent plasma. We will apply them directly to high resolution supernova-driven turbulence simulations to understand how the energy cascade works in the interstellar medium of our Galaxy.