English

Mean field dynamo action in shearing flows. II: fluctuating kinetic helicity with zero mean

Fluid Dynamics 2021-10-13 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

Here we explore the role of temporal fluctuations in kinetic helicity on the generation of large-scale magnetic fields in presence of a background linear shear flow. Key techniques involved here are same as in our earlier work \citep[][hereafter paper~I]{JS20}, where we have used the renovating flow based model with shearing waves. Both, the velocity and the helicity fields, are treated as stochastic variables with finite correlation times, τ\tau and τh\tau_h, respectively. Growing solutions are obtained when τh>τ\tau_h > \tau, even when this time-scale separation, characterised by m=τh/τm=\tau_h/\tau, remains below the threshold for causing the turbulent diffusion to turn negative. In regimes when turbulent diffusion remains positive, and τ\tau is on the order of eddy turnover time TT, the axisymmetric modes display non-monotonic behaviour with shear rate SS: both, the growth rate γ\gamma and the wavenumber kk_\ast corresponding to the fastest growing mode, first increase, reach a maximum and then decrease with S|S|, with kk_\ast being always smaller than eddy-wavenumber, thus boosting growth of magnetic fields at large length scales. The cycle period PcycP_{\rm cyc} of growing dynamo wave is inversely proportional to S|S| at small shear, exactly as in the fixed kinetic helicity case of paper~I. This dependence becomes shallower at larger shear. Interestingly enough, various curves corresponding to different choices of mm collapse on top of each other in a plot of mPcycm P_{\rm cyc} with S|S|.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2103.12599,
  title  = {Mean field dynamo action in shearing flows. II: fluctuating kinetic helicity with zero mean},
  author = {Naveen Jingade and Nishant K. Singh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.12599},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

14 pages, 10 figures, Submitted to MNRAS