DENSITY-MAGNETIC FIELD CORRELATION IN MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC TURBULENCE DRIVEN BY DIFFERENT DRIVING SCHEMES WITH DIFFERENT CORRELATION TIMES

Turbulent motions naturally produce density and magnetic-field fluctuations. Correlation between the two fluctuations is important for interpretation of observations, such as observations of the rotation measure (RM). In this paper, we study the effect of driving schemes on the density-magnetic-field correlation. In particular, we numerically investigate how the correlation time of driving affects the correlation between density and magnetic field. We perform compressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence simulations at different sonic Mach numbers ( M _s ), using two different driving schemes—a finite-correlated driving and a delta-correlated driving. In the former, the forcing vectors change continuously with a correlation time comparable to the large-eddy turnover time. In the latter, the direction (and amplitude) of driving changes in a very short timescale. The finite-correlated driving results in strong anti-correlation between two fields when the sonic and the Alfvénic Mach numbers are similar to unity (i.e., when M _s ∼ 1 and M _A ∼ 1, respectively). However, the anti-correlation becomes weaker and approaches zero for higher values of M _s or M _A. The delta-correlated driving produces virtually no correlation between two fields when M _s ∼ 1 and M _A ∼ 1, and produces more and more positive correlations as M _s or M _A increases. We conjecture that two competing effects, tendency for achieving balance between the gas and the magnetic pressure and simultaneous compression of fluid and magnetic field, determine the correlation behavior. We also investigate how different driving schemes affect the Probability Density Function of three-dimensional density, dispersion measure, and RM.