English

Efficient highly-subsonic turbulent dynamo and growth of primordial magnetic fields

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2021-03-04 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

We present the first study on the amplification of magnetic fields by the turbulent dynamo in the highly subsonic regime, with Mach numbers ranging from 10310^{-3} to 0.40.4. We find that for the lower Mach numbers the saturation efficiency of the dynamo, (Emag/Ekin)sat(E_{\mathrm{mag}}/E_{\mathrm{kin}})_{\mathrm{sat}}, increases as the Mach number decreases. Even in the case when injection of energy is purely through longitudinal forcing modes, (Emag/Ekin)sat(E_{\mathrm{mag}}/E_{\mathrm{kin}})_{\mathrm{sat}} 102\gtrsim 10^{-2} at a Mach number of 10310^{-3}. We apply our results to magnetic field amplification in the early Universe and predict that a turbulent dynamo can amplify primordial magnetic fields to \gtrsim 101610^{-16} Gauss on scales up to 0.1 pc and \gtrsim 101310^{-13} Gauss on scales up to 100 pc. This produces fields compatible with lower limits of the intergalactic magnetic field inferred from blazar γ\gamma-ray observations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2101.08256,
  title  = {Efficient highly-subsonic turbulent dynamo and growth of primordial magnetic fields},
  author = {Radhika Achikanath Chirakkara and Christoph Federrath and Pranjal Trivedi and Robi Banerjee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.08256},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

9 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables; accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters