Growth of correlation in compressible two-dimensional magnetofluid turbulence

Spectral transfer has been proposed as the primary mechanism for generating outward propagating Alfven waves in the solar wind. This process has been investigated extensively for incompressible magnetofluids, but the issue of whether it occurs in compressible magnetofluids such as the solar wind remains unresolved. The authors report the results of direct numerical simulations of nonisentropic, compressible, two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic turbulence which indicate that for systems with finite initial cross-helicity the correlation between the fluctuating velocity field and the fluctuating magnetic field grows as a function of time. They support the interpretation of this growth of correlation as a turbulent process by examination of modal wave number spectra