paper

A Unified treatment of small and large- scale dynamos in helical turbulence

arXiv:astro-ph/9908280 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.83.2957

Abstract

Helical turbulence is thought to provide the key to the generation of large-scale magnetic fields. Turbulence also generically leads to rapidly growing small-scale magnetic fields correlated on the turbulence scales. These two processes are usually studied separately. We give here a unified treatment of both processes, in the case of random fields, incorporating also a simple model non-linear drift. In the process we uncover an interesting plausible saturated state of the small-scale dynamo and a novel analogy between quantum mechanical (QM) tunneling and the generation of large scale fields. The steady state problem of the combined small/large scale dynamo, is mapped to a zero-energy, QM potential problem; but a potential which, for non-zero mean helicity, allows tunneling of bound states. A field generated by the small-scale dynamo, can 'tunnel' to produce large-scale correlations, which in steady state, correspond to a force-free 'mean' field.

4 pages, 1 figure, Physical Review Letters, in press

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