On numerical turbulence generation for test-particle simulations

A modified method is presented to generate artificial magnetic turbulence that is used for test-particle simulations. Such turbulent fields are obtained from the superposition of a set of wave modes with random polarizations and random directions of propagation. First, it is shown that the new method simultaneously fulfils requirements of isotropy, equal mean amplitude and variance for all field components, and vanishing divergence. Second, the number of wave modes required for a stochastic particle behavior is investigated by using a Lyapunov approach. For the special case of slab turbulence, it is shown that already for 16 wave modes the particle behavior agrees with that shown for considerably larger numbers of wave modes. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4789861]