English

Shear-current effect in a turbulent convection with a large-scale shear

Astrophysics 2008-11-26 v1

Abstract

The shear-current effect in a nonrotating homogeneous turbulent convection with a large-scale constant shear is studied. The large-scale velocity shear causes anisotropy of turbulent convection, which produces the mean electromotive force \becE(W)W×J\bec{\cal E}^{(W)} \propto {\bf W} {\bf \times} {\bf J} and the mean electric current along the original mean magnetic field, where W{\bf W} is the background mean vorticity due to the shear and J{\bf J} is the mean electric current. This results in a large-scale dynamo even in a nonrotating and nonhelical homogeneous sheared turbulent convection, whereby the α\alpha effect vanishes. It is found that turbulent convection promotes the shear-current dynamo instability, i.e., the heat flux causes positive contribution to the shear-current effect. However, there is no dynamo action due to the shear-current effect for small hydrodynamic and magnetic Reynolds numbers even in a turbulent convection, if the spatial scaling for the turbulent correlation time is τ(k)k2\tau(k) \propto k^{-2}, where kk is the small-scale wave number.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0702659,
  title  = {Shear-current effect in a turbulent convection with a large-scale shear},
  author = {I. Rogachevskii and N. Kleeorin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0702659},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

8 pages, Physical Review E, in press