Mean fields and fluctuations in compressible magnetohydrodynamic flows

Funding Information: The authors wish to acknowledge CSC–IT Center for Science, Finland, for computational resources Grand Challenge SNDYN. This research also made use of the Rocket High Performance Computing service at Newcastle University. F.A.G. acknowledges support from the Finnish-American Research and Innovation Accelerator. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.We apply Gaussian smoothing to obtain mean magnetic field, density, velocity, and magnetic and kinetic energy densities from our numerical model of the interstellar medium, based on three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic equations in a shearing box 1 x 1 x 2 kpc in size. The interstellar medium is highly compressible, as the turbulence is transonic or supersonic; it is thus an excellent context in which to explore the use of smoothing to represent physical variables in a compressible medium in terms of their mean and fluctuating parts. Unlike alternative averaging procedures, such as horizontal averaging, Gaussian smoothing retains the three-dimensional structure of the mean fields. Although Gaussian smoothing does not obey the Reynolds rules of averaging, physically meaningful and mathematically sound central statistical moments are defined as suggested by Germano [Turbulence - The filtering approach. J. Fluid Mech. 1992, 238, 325-336]. We discuss methods to identify an optimal smoothing scale l and the effects of this choice on the results. From spectral analysis of the magnetic, density and velocity fields, we find a suitable smoothing length for all three fields, of l approximate to 75 pc. Such a smoothing scale is likely to be sensitive to the choice of simulation parameters; this may be considered in future work, but here we just explore the methodology. We discuss the properties of third-order statistical moments in fluctuations of kinetic energy density in compressible flows, and suggest their physical interpretation. The mean magnetic field, amplified by a mean-field dynamo, significantly alters the distribution of kinetic energy in space and between scales, reducing the magnitude of kinetic energy at intermediate scales. This intermediate-scale kinetic energy is a useful diagnostic of the importance of SN-driven outflows.Peer reviewe