Intermittency in spherical Couette dynamos

Raphaël Raynaud^1,2 and Emmanuel Dormy^1,3

¹MAG (LRA), Ecole Normale Supérieure, 24 rue Lhomond, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France
²LERMA, CNRS UMR 8112, Paris, France
³IPGP, CNRS UMR 7154, Paris, France

Phys. Rev. E 87, 033011 (2013) [6 pages]

PACS: 47.35.Tv, 47.65.-d, 47.27.E-

Abstract. We investigate dynamo action in three-dimensional numerical simulations of turbulent spherical Couette flows. Close to the onset of dynamo action, the magnetic field exhibits an intermittent behavior, characterized by a series of short bursts of the magnetic energy separated by low-energy phases. We show that this behavior corresponds to the so-called on-off intermittency. This behavior is here reported for dynamo action with realistic boundary conditions. We investigate the role of magnetic boundary conditions in this phenomenon.