Magnetic field reversals in an experimental turbulent dynamo

By Michael Berhanu, R. Monchaux, S. Fauve, N. Mordant, F. Pétrélis, A. Chiffaudel, F. Daviaud, B'erengere Dubrulle, L. Marié, Florent Ravelet and 4 more. 2007

248 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report the first experimental observation of reversals of a dynamo field generated in a laboratory experiment based on a turbulent flow of liquid sodium. The magnetic field randomly switches between two symmetric solutions B and –B. We observe a hierarchy of time scales similar to the Earth's magnetic field: the duration of the steady phases is widely distributed, but is always much longer than the time needed to switch polarity. In addition to reversals we report excursions. Both coincide with minima of the mechanical power driving the flow. Small changes in the flow driving parameters also reveal a large variety of dynamo regimes.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Molecular Biology, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aae6ffdf4c64fb4efb04efddbac87d76cd0e17e0

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A. Schekochihin
2. S. Cowley
3. Matthias Rempel
4. C. Chen
5. Gregory G. Howes
6. William Dorland
7. E. Quataert
8. Gregory W. Hammett

In Molecular Biology

1. A. Schekochihin
2. S. Cowley
3. Matthias Rempel

In Oceanography

1. A. Schekochihin
2. S. Cowley

Citations in the corpus

• Fluctuation dynamo and turbulent induction at low magnetic Prandtl numbers (2007, background): “These have recently been joined by a successful laboratory demonstration of the dynamo action in a geometrically unconstrained turbulence of liquid sodium (Monchaux et al. 2007, Berhanu et al. 2007).”