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Astrophysics

Title: A Vorticity-Magnetic Field Dynamo Instability

Authors: Eric G. Blackman (Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University, UK), Tom Chou (DAMTP, Cambridge University, UK)
Abstract: We generalize the mean field magnetic dynamo to include local evolution of the mean vorticity in addition to the mean magnetic field. The coupled equations exhibit a general mean field dynamo instability that enables the transfer of turbulent energy to the magnetic field and vorticity on larger scales. The growth of the vorticity and magnetic field both require helical turbulence which can be supplied by an underlying global rotation. The dynamo coefficients are derived including the backreaction from the mean magnetic field to lowest order. We find that a mean vorticity field can actually seed exponential growth of mean magnetic field from only a small scale seed magnetic field, without the need for a seed mean magnetic field. The equations decouple when the fluctuating velocity and magnetic field cross-correlations vanish, resulting in the separate mean field magnetic and mean field vorticity dynamo equations.
Comments: 7pages, 0 figs, aas2pp4.sty, ApJL
Subjects: Astrophysics (astro-ph); Condensed Matter (cond-mat); Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn); Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph)
Journal reference: (1997) ApJ, 489, L95
Cite as: arXiv:astro-ph/9708019v1

Submission history

From: Eric Blackman [view email]
[v1] Sun, 3 Aug 1997 20:55:21 GMT (17kb)