Characterisation of the turbulent electromotive force and its magnetically-mediated quenching in a global EULAG-MHD simulation of solar convection

TL;DR

This study analyzes the turbulent electromotive force in a global MHD simulation of solar convection, quantifying its tensorial properties, quenching behavior, and comparison with theoretical models, revealing insights into magnetic field generation and suppression mechanisms.

Contribution

It provides a detailed tensorial characterization of the turbulent electromotive force and its magnetic quenching in a comprehensive solar convection simulation, extending previous analyses.

Findings

The alpha-tensor agrees with prior studies and theoretical predictions.

The turbulent magnetic diffusivity tensor beta is positive and spatially variable.

Magnetic quenching reduces the alpha-effect by a factor of three during the cycle.

Abstract

We perform a mean-field analysis of the EULAG-MHD millenium simulation of global magnetohydrodynamical convection presented in Passos et al. 2014. The turbulent electromotive force operating in the simulation is assumed to be linearly related to the cyclic axisymmetric mean magnetic field and its first spatial derivatives. At every grid point in the simulation's meridional plane, this assumed relationship involves 27 independent tensorial coefficients. Expanding on Racine et al. 2011, we extract these coefficients from the simulation data through a least-squares minimization procedure based on singular value decomposition. The reconstructed alpha-tensor shows good agreement with that obtained by Racine et al. 2011, who did not include derivatives of the mean-field in their fit, as well as with the alpha-tensor extracted by Augustson et al. 2015 from a distinct ASH MHD simulation. The isotropic part of the turbulent magnetic diffusivity tensor beta is positive definite and reaches values of 5.0x10^7 m2s-1 in the middle of the convecting fluid layers. The spatial variations of both alpha_phiphi and beta_phiphi component are well reproduced by expressions obtained under the SOCA, with a good matching of amplitude requiring a turbulent correlation time about five times smaller than the estimated turnover time of the small-scale turbulent flow. We find the magnetic quenching of the alpha-effect to be driven primarily by a reduction of the small-scale flow's kinetic helicity, with variations of the current helicity playing a lesser role in most locations in the simulation domain. Our measurements of turbulent diffusivity quenching are restricted to the beta_phiphi component, but indicate a weaker quenching, by a factor of 1.36, than of the alpha effect, which in our simulation drops by a factor of three between the minimum and maximum phases of the magnetic cycle.