Scale Selection in the Stratified Convection of the Solar Photosphere

TL;DR

This study investigates how stratification influences the dominant scales of turbulent convection in the solar photosphere, revealing that increased stratification leads to smaller energetic structures and altered flow dynamics.

Contribution

The paper provides new insights into the impact of stratification on convection scales through numerical simulations, addressing solar mesogranulation.

Findings

Increased stratification shifts convection to smaller scales.

Vertical flow amplitude decreases with stratification.

Results have implications for understanding solar mesogranulation.

Abstract

We examine the role of stratification in determining the scale for turbulent anelastic convection. Motivated by the range of scales observed in convection at the solar photosphere, we perform local numerical simulations of convection for a range of density contrasts in large domains. We analyse both the Eulerian and Lagrangian statistics of the convection and demonstrate that increasing the stratification shifts the scale of the most energetic structures in the flow to smaller scales; furthermore, the relative amplitude of vertical to horizontal flows in the convection decreases with increasing stratification. We discuss the implications of our results to the issue of solar mesogranulation.