Cross helicity and related dynamo

Abstract

The turbulent cross helicity is directly related to the coupling coefficients for the mean vorticity in the electromotive force and for the mean magnetic-field strain in the Reynolds stress tensor. This suggests that the cross-helicity effects are important in the cases where global inhomogeneous flow and magnetic-field structures are present. Since such large-scale structures are ubiquitous in geo/astrophysical phenomena, the cross-helicity effect is expected to play an important role in geo/astrophysical flows. In the presence of turbulent cross helicity, the mean vortical motion contributes to the turbulent electromotive force. Magnetic-field generation due to this effect is called the cross-helicity dynamo. Several features of the cross-helicity dynamo are introduced. Unlike the case in the helicity or $α$ effect, where ${\bf{J}}$ is aligned with ${\bf{B}}$ in the turbulent electromotive force, we in general have a finite mean-field Lorentz force ${\bf{J}} \times {\bf{B}}$