Supercriticality to subcriticality in dynamo transitions

Abstract

Evidence from numerical simulations suggests that the nature of dynamo transition changes from supercritical to subcritical as the magnetic Prandtl number is decreased. To explore this interesting crossover, we first use direct numerical simulations to investigate the hysteresis zone of a subcritical Taylor-Green dynamo. We establish that a well defined boundary exists in this hysteresis region which separates dynamo states from the purely hydrodynamic solution. We then propose simple dynamo models which show similar crossover from supercritical to subcritical dynamo transition as a function of the magnetic Prandtl number. Our models show that the change in the nature of dynamo transition is connected to the stabilizing or de-stabilizing influence of governing non-linearities.