Publications Repository - Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf

Magnetic fields of cosmic bodies are generated by the hydromagnetic dynamo effect in moving electrically conducting fluids, such as liquid metals or plasmas. Once produced, cosmic magnetic fields are able to act back on moving fluids. This back-reaction may have dramatic consequences for cosmic structure formation, with the magnetorotational instability (MRI) in accretions disks as the most prominent example. Considerable theoretical and computational progress has been made in understanding both the dynamo effect as well as magnetically triggered flow instabilities. Complementary to this, the last fifteen years have seen much effort in studying both effects in liquid metal experiments.
In the talk, we summarize the history of these experiments, discuss their main results and their limitations, and give an outlook on future activities. As for dynamo action, we focus on the Riga, Karlsruhe and Cadarache experiments, and discuss the present status of a large-scale precession-driven dynamo experiment to be set-up in the framework of the DRESDYN project. As for magnetically triggered instabilities, we review the recent experiments on the helical and azimuthal versions of the MRI, as well as on the current-driven Tayler instability (TI). After discussing the astrophysical relevance of those basically induction-less instabilities, we motivate the set-up of a large-scale liquid sodium experiment for studying the continuous transition to the standard version of MRI.