Scaling laws and phase space analysis of a geomagnetic domino model

Abstract

The geomagnetic field is among the most striking features of the Earth. By far the most important ingredient of it is generate in the fluid conductive outer core and it is known as the main field. It is characterized by a strong dipolar component as measured on the Earth’s surface. It is well established the fact that the dipolar component has reversed polarity many times, a phenomenon dubbed as dipolar field reversal (DFR). There have been proposed numerous models focused on describing the statistical features of the occurrence of such phenomena. One of them is the domino model, a simple toy model that despite its simplicity displays a very rich dynamic. This model incorporates several aspects of the outer core dynamics like the effect of rotation of Earth, the appearance of convective columns which create their own magnetic field, etc. In this paper we analyse the phase space of parameters of the model and identify several regimes. The two main regimes are the polarity changing one and the regime where the polarity remains the same. Also, we draw some scaling laws that characterize the relationship between the parameters and the mean time between reversals (mtr), the main output of the model.