Bounds on the attractor dimension for magnetohydrodynamic channel flow with parallel magnetic field at low magnetic Reynolds number

Abstract: We investigate aspects of low-magnetic-Reynolds-number flow between two parallel, perfectly insulating walls, in the presence of an imposed magnetic field parallel to the bounding walls. We find a functional basis to describe the flow, well adapted to the problem of finding the attractor dimension, and which is also used in subsequent direct numerical simulation of these flows. For given Reynolds and Hartmann numbers, we obtain an upper bound for the dimension of the attractor by means of known bounds on the nonlinear inertial term and this functional basis for the flow. Three distinct flow regimes emerge: a quasi-isotropic 3D flow, a non-isotropic three-dimensional (3D) flow, and a 2D flow. We find the transition curves between these regimes in the space parameterized by Hartmann number Ha and attractor dimension $d_\text{att}$. We find how the attractor dimension scales as a function of Reynolds and Hartmann numbers (Re and Ha) in each regime. We also investigate the thickness of the boundary layer along the bounding wall, and find that in all regimes this scales as 1/Re, independently of the value of Ha, unlike Hartmann boundary layers found when the field is normal to the channel. The structure of the set of least dissipative modes is indeed quite different between these two cases but the properties of turbulence far from the walls (smallest scales and number of degrees of freedom) are found to be very similar.