Self-Exciting Fluid Dynamos

Description

Exploring the origins and evolution of magnetic fields in planets, stars and galaxies, this book gives a basic introduction to magnetohydrodynamics and surveys the observational data, with particular focus on geomagnetism and solar magnetism. Pioneering laboratory experiments that seek to replicate particular aspects of fluid dynamo action are also described. The authors provide a complete treatment of laminar dynamo theory, and of the mean-field electrodynamics that incorporates the effects of random waves and turbulence. Both dynamo theory and its counterpart, the theory of magnetic relaxation, are covered. Topological constraints associated with conservation of magnetic helicity are thoroughly explored and major challenges are addressed in areas such as fast-dynamo theory, accretion-disc dynamo theory and the theory of magnetostrophic turbulence. The book is aimed at graduate-level students in mathematics, physics, Earth sciences and astrophysics, and will be a valuable resource for researchers at all levels.

Keith Moffatt FRS is Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge. He has served as Head of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and as Director of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge. A former editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, he has published papers in fluid dynamics and magnetohydrodynamics, and was a pioneer in the development of topological fluid dynamics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a member of Academia Europaea, and a Foreign Member of the Academies of France, Italy, the Netherlands and USA. He has been awarded numerous prizes, most recently the 2018 Fluid Dynamics Prize of the American Physical Society. Emmanuel Dormy is a Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Directeur de Recherche at the Department of Mathematics and its Applications at the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) in Paris. He is also a professor at the ENS and at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he teaches different aspects of fluid dynamics. Convinced of the need to embrace all aspects of the dynamo problem, in 2006 he started a research group at the ENS which promotes an interdisciplinary approach and jointly studies all geophysical and astrophysical aspects of dynamo theory. He also founded and directed the Dynamo-GDRE, which promotes exchanges among researchers working on all aspects of dynamo theory throughout Europe and beyond, and he organises widely attended annual meetings.