Spontaneous chiral parity breaking by hydromagnetic buoyancy

TL;DR

This paper reports the first observation of a parity-breaking magnetic buoyancy instability in a stratified gas, which spontaneously develops helicity, with potential implications for magnetic field generation in astrophysical contexts.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of spontaneous chiral parity breaking in magnetohydrodynamic buoyancy instabilities, a novel phenomenon in the field.

Findings

No helicity produced without rotation

Instability becomes helical during development

Potential relevance to galaxy cluster magnetic fields

Abstract

Evidence for a parity-breaking nature of the magnetic buoyancy instability in a stably stratified gas is reported. In the absence of rotation, no helicity is produced, but the non-helical state is found to be unstable to small helical perturbations during the development of the instability. The parity-breaking nature of an instability in magnetohydrodynamics appears to be the first of its kind and is similar to chiral symmetry breaking in biochemistry. Applications to the production of mean fields in galaxy clusters are being discussed.