Chandrasekhar-Kendall functions in astrophysical dynamos

Abstract

Some of the contributions of Chandrasekhar to the field of magnetohydrodynamics are highlighted. Particular emphasis is placed on the Chandrasekhar-Kendall functions that allow a decomposition of a vector field into right- and left-handed contributions. Magnetic energy spectra of both contributions are shown for a new set of helically forced simulations at resolutions higher than what has been available so far. For a forcing function with positive helicity, these simulations show a forward cascade of the right-handed contributions to the magnetic field and nonlocal inverse transfer for the left-handed contributions. The speed of inverse transfer is shown to decrease with increasing value of the magnetic Reynolds number.

10 pages, 5 figures, proceedings of the Chandrasekhar Centenary Conference, to be published in PRAMANA - Journal of Physics

References in corpus (3)

• Studies of regular and random magnetic fields in the ISM: statistics of polarization vectors and the Chandrasekhar-Fermi technique
• Direct simulations of a supernova-driven galactic dynamo
• The Nuclear Stellar Disk in Andromeda: A Fossil from the Era of Black Hole Growth

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Current status of turbulent dynamo theory: From large-scale to small-scale dynamos
• Simulations of galactic dynamos
• Resilience of helical fields to turbulent diffusion II: direct numerical simulations
• Polarization properties of turbulent synchrotron bubbles: an approach based on Chandrasekhar-Kendall functions