English

Scaling and intermittency in incoherent \alpha-shear dynamo

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2013-06-28 v3 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Plasma Physics

Abstract

We consider mean-field dynamo models with fluctuating \alpha effect, both with and without shear. The \alpha effect is chosen to be Gaussian white noise with zero mean and given covariance. We show analytically that the mean magnetic field does not grow, but, in an infinitely large domain, the mean-squared magnetic field shows exponential growth of the fastest growing mode at a rate proportional to the shear rate, which agrees with earlier numerical results of Yousef et al (2008) and recent analytical treatment by Heinemann et al (2011) who use a method different from ours. In the absence of shear, an incoherent \alpha^2 dynamo may also be possible. We further show by explicit calculation of the growth rate of third and fourth order moments of the magnetic field that the probability density function of the mean magnetic field generated by this dynamo is non-Gaussian.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1107.2419,
  title  = {Scaling and intermittency in incoherent \alpha-shear dynamo},
  author = {Dhrubaditya Mitra and Axel Brandenburg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1107.2419},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

Mysteriously missing a line in introduction, ("Heinemann et al. (2011) have recently proposed a simple analytically tractable model ..") which has now been added

R2 v1 2026-06-21T18:35:50.863Z