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Kannabiran Seshasayanan

Publications and source records attributed to Kannabiran Seshasayanan.

21 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

The onset of turbulent rotating dynamos at the low $Pm$ limit

We demonstrate that the critical magnetic Reynolds number $Rm_c$ for a turbulent non-helical dynamo in the low magnetic Prandtl number $Pm$ limit (i.e. $Pm = Rm/Re \ll 1$) can be significantly reduced if the flow is submitted to global rotation. Even for moderate rotation rates the required energy injection rate can be reduced by a factor more than $10^3$. This strong decrease of the onset is attributed to the reduction of the turbulent fluctuations that makes the flow to have a much larger cut-off length-scale compared to a non-rotating flow of the same Reynolds number. The dynamo thus behaves as if it is driven by laminar behaviour (i.e. high $Pm$ behaviour) even at high values of the Reynolds number (i.e. at low values of $Pm$). Our finding thus points into a new paradigm for the design of new liquid metal dynamo experiments.

physics.flu-dyn↗

Transition from 2D HD to 2D MHD turbulence

We investigate the critical transition from an inverse cascade of energy to a forward energy cascade in a two-dimensional magneto-hydrodynamic flow as the ratio of magnetic to mechanical forcing amplitude is varied. It is found that the critical transition is the result of two competing processes. The first process is due to hydrodynamic interactions, cascades the energy to the large scales. The second process couples small scale magnetic fields to large scale flows transferring the energy back to the small scales via a non-local mechanism. At marginality the two cascades are both present and cancel each other. The phase space diagram of the transition is sketched.

physics.flu-dyn↗

On the edge of an inverse cascade

We demonstrate that systems with a parameter-controlled inverse cascade can exhibit critical behavior for which at the critical value of the control parameter the inverse cascade stops. In the vicinity of such a critical point standard phenomenological estimates for the energy balance will fail since the energy flux towards large length scales becomes zero. We demonstrate these concepts using the computationally tractable model of two-dimensional magneto-hydrodynamics in a periodic box. In the absence of any external magnetic forcing the system reduces to hydrodynamic fluid turbulence with an inverse energy cascade. In the presence of strong magnetic forcing the system behaves as 2D magneto-hydrodynamic turbulence with forward energy cascade. As the amplitude of the magnetic forcing is varied a critical value is met for which the energy flux towards the large scales becomes zero. Close to this point the energy flux scales as a power law with the departure from the critical point and the normalized amplitude of the fluctuations diverges. Similar behavior is observed for the flux of the square vector potential for which no inverse flux is observed for weak magnetic forcing, while a finite inverse flux is observed for magnetic forcing above the critical point. We conjecture that this behavior is generic for systems of variable inverse cascade.

physics.flu-dyn↗