Influence of turbulence on rising flux tubes in the solar convection zone

Abstract

The role of turbulence in facilitating the flux tubes generated at low solar latitudes at the bottom of the convection zone to emerge at the typical sunspot latitudes is investigated. It is found that large scale turbulence on the scale of the giant cells cannot dominate the Coriolis force, since such domination would require either an unreasonably large updraft velocity in the giant cells or an unreasonably small flux tube radii. On the other hand, small-scale turbulence can suppress the Coriolis force by exchanging angular momentum between the flux tube and the surroundings, provided the flux tubes have radii smaller than a few hundred km.