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Contributed talk: Thermo-compositional convection and dynamos in rotating spherical shells

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DY2W03 - Modeling, observing and understanding flows and magnetic fields in the Earth's core and in the Sun

Convection and magnetic field generation in the Earth and planetary interiors are driven by both thermal and compositional gradients. In this work numerical simulations of finite-amplitude double-diffusive convection and dynamo action in rapidly rotating spherical shells full of incompressible two-component electrically-conducting fluid are reported. Four distinct regimes of rotating double-diffusive convection can be identified in linear analysis and these are found to persist significantly beyond the onset of instability while their regime transitions remain abrupt. In the semi-convecting and the fingering regimes characteristic flow velocities are small compared to those in the thermally- and compositionally-dominated overturning regimes, while zonal flows remain weak in all regimes apart from the thermally-dominated one. Compositionally-dominated overturning convection exhibits significantly narrower azimuthal structures compared to all other regimes while differential rotation becomes the dominant flow component in the thermally-dominated case as driving is increased. Dynamo action occurs in all regimes apart from the regime of fingering convection. While dynamos persist in the semi-convective regime they are very much impaired by small flow intensities and very weak differential rotation in this regime which makes poloidal to toroidal field conversion problematic. The dynamos in the thermally-dominated regime include oscillating dipolar, quadrupolar and multipolar cases similar to the ones known from earlier parameter studies. Dynamos in the compositionally-dominated regime exhibit subdued temporal variation and remain predominantly dipolar due to weak zonal flow in this regime.   Radostin D. Simitev, James Mather & Luis Silva School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK  

This talk is part of the Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series series.

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