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Updated: Aug 30, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Electromotive force and large-scale magnetic dynamo in a turbulent flow with a mean shear
Igor Rogachevskii1, Nathan Kleeorin
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel. gary@menix.bgu.ac.il
Abstract:
An effect of sheared large-scale motions on a mean electromotive force in a nonrotating turbulent flow of a conducting fluid is studied. It is demonstrated that in a homogeneous divergence-free turbulent flow the alpha effect does not exist, however a mean magnetic field can be generated even in a nonrotating turbulence with an imposed mean velocity shear due to a "shear-current" effect. A mean velocity shear results in an anisotropy of turbulent magnetic diffusion. A contribution to the electromotive force related to the symmetric parts of the gradient tensor of the mean magnetic field (the kappa effect) is found in nonrotating turbulent flows with a mean shear. The kappa effect and turbulent magnetic diffusion reduce the growth rate of the mean magnetic field. It is shown that a mean magnetic field can be generated when the exponent of the energy spectrum of the background turbulence (without the mean velocity shear) is less than 2. The shear-current effect was studied using two different methods: the tau approximation (the Orszag third-order closure procedure) and the stochastic calculus (the path integral representation of the solution of the induction equation, Feynman-Kac formula, and Cameron-Martin-Girsanov theorem). Astrophysical applications of the obtained results are discussed.
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