arXiv:2602.13528v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We investigate magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in plane shear flows with a streamwise background magnetic field in the super-Alfv’enic regime. We show that the large-scale velocity shear suppresses turbulence imbalance, driving the system toward a balanced state — the energies of counter-propagating Alfv’en waves become essentially equal, even at initially perfectly imbalanced Alfv’enic turbulence. This balancing is due to the shear-induced linear non-modal dynamics of Alfv’en waves, including their transient growth and over-reflection. This linear route to balancing turbulence is new — fundamentally different from nonlinear ones operative in shearless MHD turbulence — and have direct implications for understanding balanced/imbalanced MHD turbulence in the solar wind, which is modeled as a shear flow in a thermodynamically complex plasma.