English

Growth rate of small-scale dynamo at low magnetic Prandtl numbers

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2015-06-03 v2 Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

In this study we discuss two key issues related to a small-scale dynamo instability at low magnetic Prandtl numbers and large magnetic Reynolds numbers, namely: (i) the scaling for the growth rate of small-scale dynamo instability in the vicinity of the dynamo threshold; (ii) the existence of the Golitsyn spectrum of magnetic fluctuations in small-scale dynamos. There are two different asymptotics for the small-scale dynamo growth rate: in the vicinity of the threshold of the excitation of the small-scale dynamo instability, λln(Rm/Rmcr)\lambda \propto \ln({\rm Rm}/ {\rm Rm}^{\rm cr}), and when the magnetic Reynolds number is much larger than the threshold of the excitation of the small-scale dynamo instability, λRm1/2\lambda \propto {\rm Rm}^{1/2}, where Rmcr{\rm Rm}^{\rm cr} is the small-scale dynamo instability threshold in the magnetic Reynolds number Rm{\rm Rm}. We demonstrated that the existence of the Golitsyn spectrum of magnetic fluctuations requires a finite correlation time of the random velocity field. On the other hand, the influence of the Golitsyn spectrum on the small-scale dynamo instability is minor. This is the reason why it is so difficult to observe this spectrum in direct numerical simulations for the small-scale dynamo with low magnetic Prandtl numbers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1112.3926,
  title  = {Growth rate of small-scale dynamo at low magnetic Prandtl numbers},
  author = {N. Kleeorin and I. Rogachevskii},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1112.3926},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

14 pages, 1 figure, revised version