The treatment of magnetic buoyancy in flux transport dynamo models

Abstract

One important ingredient of flux transport dynamo models is the rise of the toroidal magnetic field through the convection zone due to magnetic buoyancy to produce bipolar sunspots and then the generation of the poloidal magnetic field from these bipolar sunspots due to the Babcock-Leighton mechanism. Over the years, two methods of treating magnetic buoyancy, a local method and a non-local method have been used widely by different groups in constructing 2D kinematic models of the flux transport dynamo. We review both these methods and conclude that neither of them is fully satisfactory, presumably because magnetic buoyancy is an inherently 3D process. We also point out so far we do not have proper understanding of why sunspot emergence is restricted to rather low latitudes.

23 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to a special issue of Advances in Space Research on "Solar Dynamo Frontiers"

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Cited by in corpus (9)

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• Starspots, Stellar Cycles and Stellar Flares: Lessons from Solar Dynamo Models
• A New Formula for Predicting Solar Cycles
• A theoretical model of the variation of the meridional circulation with the solar cycle
• Supercriticality of the dynamo limits the memory of the polar field to one cycle
• Diamagnetic pumping in a rotating convection zone
• Flux Transport Dynamo: From Modelling Irregularities to Making Predictions
• Recent advances in the 3D kinematic Babcock-Leighton solar dynamo modeling
• Minimal Roles of Solar Subsurface Meridional Flow in the distributed-shear Babcock-Leighton Dynamo