English

How do dynamos saturate?

Fluid Dynamics 2008-09-13 v2 Plasma Physics

Abstract

In order better to understand how dynamo systems saturate, we study the kinematic dynamo properties of velocity fields that arise from nonlinearly saturated dynamos. The technique is implemented by solving concurrently, in addition to the momentum equation, two induction equations, one for the actual magnetic field, and one for an independent passive field. We apply this technique to two illustrative examples: convectively driven turbulence, and turbulence represented by a shell model. In all cases we find that the velocity remains an efficient kinematic dynamo even after nonlinear saturation occurs. We discuss the implications to the process of dynamo saturation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0809.1801,
  title  = {How do dynamos saturate?},
  author = {Fausto Cattaneo and Steve M. Tobias},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0809.1801},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

10 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Journal of Fluid Mechanics

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:18:51.653Z