Self-excitation in a helical liquid metal flow: The Riga dynamo experiments

TL;DR

This paper reviews the Riga dynamo experiments that demonstrated self-excitation of magnetic fields in a liquid metal flow, providing valuable insights into cosmic magnetic field generation and validating theoretical models.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive survey of the Riga dynamo experiments, summarizing key results and comparing experimental data with numerical simulations.

Findings

First laboratory observation of a kinematic dynamo in 1999

Extensive data on kinematic and saturated regimes

Agreement between experimental results and numerical models

Abstract

The homogeneous dynamo effect is at the root of magnetic field generation in cosmic bodies, including planets, stars and galaxies. While the underlying theory had increasingly flourished since the middle of the 20th century, hydromagnetic dynamos were not realized in laboratory until 1999. On 11 November 1999, this situation changed with the first observation of a kinematic dynamo in the Riga experiment. Since that time, a series of experimental campaigns has provided a wealth of data on the kinematic and the saturated regime. This paper is intended to give a comprehensive survey about these experiments, to summarize their main results and to compare them with numerical simulations.