Abstract
AbstractTurbulent flows take place in a large variety of astrophysical objects, and often times are the source of dynamo generated magnetic fields. Much of the progress in our understanding of dynamo mechanisms, has been made within the theoretical framework of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). However, for sufficiently diffuse media, the Hall effect eventually becomes non-negligible.We present results from simulations of the Hall-MHD equations. The simulations are performed with a pseudospectral code to achieve exponentially fast convergence. We study the role of the Hall effect in the dynamo efficiency for different values of the Hall parameter.
Highlights
Numerical simulations have progressively become an important tool to study astrophysical flows
We call the attention on the potential relevance of the Hall effect in the dynamics of a number of astrophysical flows, specially those characterized by low electron densities
We quantitatively assess the role of the Hall effect in a number of astrophysical applications, by performing numerical integrations of the Hall MHD equations
Summary
Numerical simulations have progressively become an important tool to study astrophysical flows. Hall currents can play a significant role in the dynamics of low density and/or low temperature astrophysical plasmas, such as dense molecular clouds (Wardle & Ng, 1999), accretion disks (Balbus & Terquem, 2001, Sano & Stone, 2002), white dwarfs and neutron stars (Yakovlev & Urpin, 1980) and in reconnection events at the Earth’s magnetotail (Mozer, Bale & Phan, 2002). In these plasmas the one-fluid MHD description needs to be extended to the so-called two-fluid MHD or Hall MHD.
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