High-resolution calculations of the solar global convection with the reduced speed of sound technique: I. The structure of the convection and the magnetic field without the rotation

Abstract

We carry out non-rotating high-resolution calculations of the solar global convection, which resolve convective scales of less than 10 Mm. To cope with the low Mach number conditions in the lower convection zone, we use the reduced speed of sound technique (RSST), which is simple to implement and requires only local communication in the parallel computation. In addition, the RSST allows us to expand the computational domain upward to about $0.99R_{\odot }$ as it can also handle compressible flows. Using this approach, we study the solar convection zone on the global scale, including small-scale near-surface convection. In particular, we investigate the influence of the top boundary condition on the convective structure throughout the convection zone as well as on small-scale dynamo action. Our main conclusions are: 1. The small-scale downflows generated in the near-surface layer penetrate into deeper layers to some extent and excite small-scale turbulence in the region $>0.9R_{\odot }$, where $R_{\odot }$ is the solar radius. 2. In the deeper convection zone ($<0.9R_{\odot }$), the convection is not influenced by the location of the upper boundary. 3. Using an LES approach, we can achieve small-scale dynamo action and maintain a field of about $0.15-0.25B_{\mathrm{eq}}$ throughout the convection zone, where $B_{\mathrm{eq}}$ is the equipartition magnetic field to the kinetic energy. 4. The overall dynamo efficiency varies significantly in the convection zone as a consequence of the downward directed Poynting flux and the depth variation of the intrinsic convective scales.

60 pages, 24 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

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