Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 A selective overview
- I Stellar convection and oscillations
- II Stellar rotation and magnetic fields
- III Physics and structure of stellar interiors
- IV Helio- and asteroseismology
- V Large-scale numerical experiments
- 20 Bridges between helioseismology and models of convection zone dynamics
- 21 Numerical simulations of the solar convection zone
- 22 Modelling solar and stellar magnetoconvection
- 23 Nonlinear magnetoconvection in the presence of a strong oblique field
- 24 Simulations of astrophysical fluids
- VI Dynamics
22 - Modelling solar and stellar magnetoconvection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 A selective overview
- I Stellar convection and oscillations
- II Stellar rotation and magnetic fields
- III Physics and structure of stellar interiors
- IV Helio- and asteroseismology
- V Large-scale numerical experiments
- 20 Bridges between helioseismology and models of convection zone dynamics
- 21 Numerical simulations of the solar convection zone
- 22 Modelling solar and stellar magnetoconvection
- 23 Nonlinear magnetoconvection in the presence of a strong oblique field
- 24 Simulations of astrophysical fluids
- VI Dynamics
Summary
Numerical experiments on three-dimensional convection in the presence of an externally imposed magnetic field reveal a range of behaviour that can be compared with that observed at the surface of the Sun (and therefore expected to be present in other similar stars). In a strongly stratified compressible layer small-scale convection gives way to a regime with flux separation as the field strength is reduced; with a weak mean field magnetic flux is concentrated into narrow lanes enclosing vigorously convecting plumes. Small-scale dynamos, generating disordered magnetic fields, have been found in Boussinesq calculations with very high magnetic Reynolds numbers; there is a gradual transition from dynamo action to magnetoconvection as the strength of the imposed field is increased.
Introduction
Thirty-seven years ago, when I was a postdoc at Culham, Roger Tayler told me that he was sending a very bright young research student to spend the summer there – and so I first met Douglas. When I moved to Cambridge a year later he was finishing his Ph.D. and then he and Rosanne went off to the States for a few years. We've been in close contact ever since they returned to Cambridge and it has been a great pleasure having Douglas as a colleague and a friend – always stimulating and often argumentative, but never causing any serious disagreement. So I am very glad to have a chance of saying ‘Thank you’ here.
As we have already been reminded, Douglas's third paper (Gough & Tayler 1966) was on magnetoconvection.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Stellar Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics , pp. 329 - 344Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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