Thursday, January 5, 2012

1201.0652 (G. Ruediger et al.)

The alpha-effect in a turbulent liquid-metal plane Couette flow    [PDF]

G. Ruediger, A. Brandenburg
The electromotive force in a plane Couette flow of conducting fluids under the influence of a large-scale magnetic field is calculated for driven turbulence. In case of a vertically stratified intensity of the turbulence the resulting \alpha-tensor in presence of a horizontal shear also possesses diagonal elements known as the so-called \alpha-effect. The possibility to measure these components is probed by both quasilinear theory and nonlinear numerical simulations. For all magnetic Prandtl numbers <~1 we find the \alpha-component along the flow in the high-conductivity limit exceeding the other components. In this limit the \alpha's run linear with the magnetic Reynolds number Rm while in the low-conductivity limit they run with the product Rm\cdot Re. For the small magnetic Prandtl numbers of liquid sodium a value for the electromotive force across the channel of order 0.05...0.5 mV for magnetic fields of about 1 kGauss and velocity fluctuations of about 1 m/s is found for a channel of (say) 50 cm height independent of its width. Such values should be appropriate to be realized in a future laboratory experiment.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0652

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