Electromagnetic conversion into kinetic and thermal energies

Abstract

Conversion of electromagnetic energy into magnetohydrodynamic energy occurs when the electric conductivity changes from negligible to finite values. This process is relevant during the epoch of reheating of the early Universe at the end of inflation and before the emergence of the radiation-dominated era. We find that conversion into kinetic and thermal energies is primarily the result of electric energy dissipation and that the magnetic energy plays only a secondary role in this process. This means that, since electric energy dominates over magnetic energy during inflation and reheating, significant amounts of electric energy can be converted into magnetohydrodynamic energy when conductivity emerges early enough, before the relevant length scales become stable.

22 pages, 16 figures, 3 tables, published in Entropy, special issue on Energy Transfer and Dissipation in Plasma Turbulence

References in corpus (11)

• Magnetic fields from inflation?
• Nonhelical inverse transfer of a decaying turbulent magnetic field
• Evolution of Primordial Magnetic Fields from Phase Transitions
• Schwinger Effect in 4D de Sitter Space and Constraints on Magnetogenesis in the Early Universe
• Classes of hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic turbulent decay
• Challenges in Inflationary Magnetogenesis: Constraints from Strong Coupling, Backreaction and the Schwinger Effect
• Magnetic Prandtl number dependence of kinetic to magnetic dissipation ratio
• Early Cosmological Evolution of Primordial Electromagnetic Fields
• Reversed dynamo at small scales and large magnetic Prandtl number
• Simulating relic gravitational waves from inflationary magnetogenesis
• Dynamo effect in unstirred self-gravitating turbulence