Bibcode
Martínez-Sykora, J.; Moreno-Insertis, F.; Cheung, M. C. M.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 814, Issue 1, article id. 2, 18 pp. (2015).
Advertised on:
11
2015
Journal
Citations
24
Refereed citations
21
Description
We study the buoyant rise of magnetic flux tubes embedded in an
adiabatic stratification using two-and three-dimensional,
magnetohydrodynamic simulations. We analyze the dependence of the tube
evolution on the field line twist and on the curvature of the tube axis
in different diffusion regimes. To be able to achieve a comparatively
high spatial resolution we use the FLASH code, which has a built-in
Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) capability. Our 3D experiments reach
Reynolds numbers that permit a reasonable comparison of the results with
those of previous 2D simulations. When the experiments are run without
AMR, hence with a comparatively large diffusivity, the amount of
longitudinal magnetic flux retained inside the tube increases with the
curvature of the tube axis. However, when a low-diffusion regime is
reached by using the AMR algorithms, the magnetic twist is able to
prevent the splitting of the magnetic loop into vortex tubes and the
loop curvature does not play any significant role. We detect the
generation of vorticity in the main body of the tube of opposite sign on
the opposite sides of the apex. This is a consequence of the
inhomogeneity of the azimuthal component of the field on the flux
surfaces. The lift force associated with this global vorticity makes the
flanks of the tube move away from their initial vertical plane in an
antisymmetric fashion. The trajectories have an oscillatory motion
superimposed, due to the shedding of vortex rolls to the wake, which
creates a Von Karman street.
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