By Toby Wood
Since the advent of helioseismology, the strong rotational shear in the solar "tachocline" has been recognised as a likely site for toroidal field generation in the Sun. But the generation of poloidal field, which is essential to close the "dynamo loop", has generally been attributed to the overlying convection zone, and recent studies have even questioned whether the tachocline is involved in the dynamo at all. We present an alternative hypothesis, in which both the toroidal and poloidal field are generated in the tachocline by a combination of shear and magnetic buoyancy instability. We demonstrate a proof-of-concept Cartesian model and ongoing efforts to identify the effects of spherical geometry and other instabilities, such as MRI.
Co-authors: Devika Tharakkal, Craig Duguid, Paul Bushby
By Matthew Juniper
By Sergey Gavrilyuk
By David Lannes
