A conserved local cross helicity for non-barotropic MHD

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Abstract

Cross helicity is not conserved in non-barotropic magnetohydro-dynamics (MHD) (as opposed to barotropic or incompressible MHD). Here we show that variational analysis suggests a new kind of local cross helicity which is conserved in the non-barotropic case. This local cross helicity can be integrated to a global non-barotropic cross helicity which was suggested in the work of Webb et al. (2014a,b). The non-barotropic cross helicity reduces to the standard cross helicity under barotropic assumptions. The new local cross helicity is conserved even for topologies for which the variational principle does not apply.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)131-137
Number of pages7
JournalGeophysical and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics
Volume111
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 4 Mar 2017

Keywords

  • Magnetohydrodynamics
  • topological conservation laws
  • variational analysis

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