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Laboratory Plasma Dynamos, Astrophysical Dynamos, and Magnetic Helicity Evolution  

CERN Document Server

The term ``dynamo'' means different things to the laboratory fusion plasma and astrophysical plasma communities. To alleviate the resulting confusion and to facilitate interdisciplinary progress, we pinpoint conceptual differences and similarities between laboratory plasma dynamos and astrophysical dynamos. We can divide dynamos into three types: 1. magnetically dominated helical dynamos which sustain a large scale magnetic field against resistive decay and drive the magnetic geometry toward the lowest energy state, 2. flow-driven helical dynamos which amplify or sustain large scale magnetic fields in an otherwise turbulent flow, and 3. flow-driven nonhelical dynamos which amplify fields on scales at or below the driving turbulence. We discuss how all three types occur in astrophysics whereas plasma confinement device ...

2006-01-01

2

The origin of large scale magnetic fields  

CERN Document Server

Magnetic fields correlated on several kiloparsec scales are seen in spiral galaxies. Their origin could be due to the winding up of a primordial cosmological field or due to amplification of a small seed field by a turbulent galactic dynamo. Both options have difficulties: There is no known battery mechanism for producing the required primordial field. Equally the turbulent dynamo may self destruct before being able to produce the large scale field, due to excess generation of small scale power. The current status of these difficulties is discussed. The resolution could depend on the nature of the saturated field produced by the small scale dynamo. We argue that the small scale fields do not fill most of the volume of the fluid and instead concentrate into intermittent ropes, with their peak value of order equipartition fields, and radii much smaller than their lengths. In this case these fields neither drain significant ...

1996-01-01

3

Spectral Modeling of Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulent Flows  

CERN Document Server

We present a dynamical spectral model for Large Eddy Simulation of the incompressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations based on the Eddy Damped Quasi Normal Markovian approximation. This model extends classical spectral Large Eddy Simulations for the Navier-Stokes equations to incorporate general (non Kolmogorovian) spectra as well as eddy noise. We derive the model for MHD and show that introducing a new eddy-damping time for the dynamics of spectral tensors in the absence of equipartition between the velocity and magnetic fields leads to better agreement with direct numerical simulations, an important point for dynamo computations.

2008-01-01

4

Magnetic field amplification and generation in hypervelocity meteoroid impacts with application to lunar paleomagnetism  

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

A one-dimensional numerical model for the expansion of impact-produced vapor clouds is used to investigate magnetic field generation mechanisms in events such as meteor collisions with the moon. The resulting cloud properties, such as ionization fraction, electrical conductivity, radial expansion velocity, mass density, and energy density are estimated. The model is initiated with the peak shock states and pressure thresholds for incipient and complete vaporization of anorthosite lunar surface materials by iron and GA composition meteorites. The expansion of the spherical gas cloud into a vacuum was traced with a one-dimensional explicit lagrangian hydrodynamic code. The hypervelocity impact plasmas produced are found to be significant in the amplitudes and orientations of the magnetic fields generated. An ambient magnetic field could have been provided by the core dynamo, which would have interacted with the expanding plasmas and formed induced paleomagnetic ...

1984-03-12