Description |
The rich magnetism displayed by many stars, including our sun,
must have their origin in dynamo action proceeding within their
convection zones involving highly turbulent flows influenced by
rotation and stratification. The striking advances in seismic probing
of stars is providing guidance about rotation states, and possibly of
magnetism, deep within a range of stars. This is complemented
by supercomputing advances that now permit 3-D global simulations
of solar and stellar convection to study the nature of magnetic
dynamo action and differential rotation that can be achieved by
complex flows involving a hierarchy of scales and patterns. In
sun-like stars, the resulting magnetic fields can exhibit remarkable
large-scale structure involving wreaths, along with temporal flips
and even cycles. In more massive stars with core dynamos,
super-equipartition magnetic fields with mega-gauss strengths can
be realized, and these have implications for intense fields in later
stages of evolution. These overlaps in observations and computational
theory make for a period of major adventures in stellar astrophysics.
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