The various facets of liquid metal convection

Abstract

Turbulent convection at low Prandtl numbers is in many aspects still terra incognita on the parameter map. One reason for this fact is that laboratory experiments on turbulent convection in this parameter regime are notoriously challenging as they require the use of opaque liquid metals. These working fluids prevent the application of typical optical imaging techniques such as particle image velocimetry. Recent experiments by Grannan et al. (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 939, 2022, R1) shed new light on the variety of regimes in liquid metal flows which include rotating convection, magnetoconvection and rotating magnetoconvection next to the classical Rayleigh–Bénard case. More importantly, the authors manage the seamless crossover from one regime into another. They were thus able to study low-Prandtl-number convection at different levels of complexity in a single experimental set-up. Their work provides new insights into the tight connections between characteristic large-scale flow behaviours and the resulting global heat transfer magnitudes. This has implications for convection in planetary cores and stellar convection zones and connected dynamo action.