Energy fluxes and shell-to-shell transfers in three-dimensional decaying magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

A spectral analysis of the energy cascade in magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) is presented using high-resolution direct numerical simulation of decaying isotropic turbulence. The Fourier representations of both the velocity and the magnetic fields are split into subsets that correspond to shells of wave vectors. A detailed study of the shell-to-shell interactions is performed and a comparison with theoretical prediction based on field-theoretic method is proposed. Two different definitions for the forward and backward energy transfers are suggested. They provide diagnostics that can be used in order to assess subgrid-scale modeling in large eddy simulation for turbulent MHD systems.