Related papers: Convective Lengthscale in Planetary Cores
Ocean heat transport on icy moons shapes the ice shell topography, a primary observable of these moons. Two key processes control the heat transport: baroclinic instability driven by surface buoyancy contrasts and convective instability…
Stably stratified layers are thought to develop at the top of the liquid metallic cores of many terrestrial planets. We consider the case where the thermal gradient is stable but the compositional gradient is unstable, a situation…
Early-type stars have convective cores due to a steep temperature gradient produced by the CNO cycle. These cores can host dynamos, and the generated magnetic fields can be relevant to explain the magnetism observed in Ap/Bp stars. Our main…
Natural dynamos such as planets and stars generate global scale magnetic field despite the inferred presence of small scale turbulence. Such systems are known as large scale dynamos and are typically driven by convection and influenced by…
Buoyancy-driven convection is likely the dominant driver of turbulent motions in the universe, and thus, is widely studied by physicists, engineers, geophysicists and astrophysicists. Maybe unsurprisingly, these different communities…
Terrestrial planets in the Habitable Zone of Sun-like stars are priority targets for detection and observation by the next generation of space telescopes. Earth's long-term habitability may have been tied to the geological carbon cycle, a…
Convection in the liquid outer core of the Earth is driven by thermal and chemical perturbations. The main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of double-diffusive convection on magnetic field generation by means of 3D global…
Three-dimensional studies of convection in deep spherical shells have been used to test the hypothesis that the strong jet streams on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune result from convection throughout the molecular envelopes. Due to…
The dynamo action achieved in the convective cores of main-sequence massive stars is explored here through 3D global simulations of convective core dynamos operating within a young $\Msun{10}$ B-type star, using the anelastic spherical…
The onset of convection in a rapidly rotating layer in which a thermal wind is present is studied. Diffusive effects are included. The main motivation is from convection in planetary interiors, where thermal winds are expected due to…
Helioseismology has provided very detailed inferences about rotation of the solar interior. Within the convection zone the rotation rate roughly shares the latitudinal variation seen in the surface differential rotation. The transition to…
Recent structure models of Jupiter suggest the existence of an extended region in the deep interior with a high heavy element abundance, referred to as a dilute core. This finding has led to increased interest in modelling the formation and…
Tidal dissipation in planetary interiors is one of the key physical mechanisms that drive the evolution of star-planet and planet-moon systems. Tidal dissipation in planets is intrinsically related to their internal structure. In…
In this chapter, we explore how gravitational interactions drive turbulent flows inside planetary cores and provide an interesting alternative to convection to explain dynamo action and magnetic fields around terrestrial bodies. In the…
The scale length over which convection mixes mass in a star can be calculated as the inverse of the vertical derivative of the unidirectional (up or down) mass flux. This is related to the mixing length in the mixing length theory of…
Differential rotation is central to a great many mysteries in stars and planets. In Part I we predicted the order of magnitude and scaling of the differential rotation in both hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic convection zones. Our…
This chapter is build from three 1.5 hours lectures given in Udine in april 2018 on various aspects of Earth's core dynamics. The chapter starts with a short historical note on the discovery of Earth's magnetic field and core (section 1).…
The problem of the turbulent thermal convection in the Earth's liquid core is considered. Following assumptions on decreasing of the spatial scales due to the rapid rotation, we propose the subgrid model of the eddy diffusivity, which is…
Stably stratified fluid layers are common in gaseous planets, stellar interiors, and planetary cores, and have long been considered incapable of sustaining dynamo action. Here, we show that semiconvection - driven by a destabilizing thermal…
A simplified model for stellar and planetary convection is derived for the magnitude of the rms velocity, degree of superadiabaticity, and characteristic length scale with Rossby number as well as with thermal and viscous diffusivities.…