Abstract
Recent decades have seen enormous progress in the experimental investigation of fundamental processes that are relevant to geophysical and astrophysical fluid dynamics. Liquid metals have proven particularly suited for such studies, partly owing to their small Prandtl numbers that are comparable to those in planetary cores and stellar convection zones, partly owing to their high electrical conductivity that allows the study of various magnetohydrodynamic phenomena. After introducing the theoretical basics and the key dimensionless parameters, we discuss some of the most important liquid-metal experiments on Rayleigh–Bénard convection, Alfvén waves, magnetically triggered flow instabilities such as the magnetorotational and Tayler instability, and the dynamo effect. Finally, we summarize what has been learned so far from those recent experiments and what could be expected from future ones.
Key points
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Geophysical and astrophysical fluid dynamics is concerned with diverse phenomena as convection and magnetic field generation in stellar and planetary interiors or accretion onto protostars and black holes.
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Liquid-metal experiments are suited for investigating these processes, partly owing to their high electrical conductivity and partly owing to their small Prandtl numbers that are comparable to those in planetary cores and stellar convection zones.
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Apart from heat transport scalings, liquid-metal convection experiments have explored a wide variety of flow structures that occur in dependence on the geometric aspect ratio and the presence of magnetic fields.
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Exposing liquid rubidium to a high-pulsed magnetic field has allowed to equalize the speeds of Alfvén waves and sound waves and to study their mutual transformation that is a key ingredient for heating the solar corona.
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The past decades have seen enormous progress in the experimental realization of the hydromagnetic dynamo effect and of various forms of the magnetorotational instability.
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Acknowledgements
Funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme of the European Union (grant agreement number 787544) is gratefully acknowledged. The author is deeply indebted to A. Gailitis (Riga) for his leadership in the joint work on the Riga dynamo experiment, as well as to G. Rüdiger (Potsdam) and R. Hollerbach (Leeds) for the long-term collaboration on the magnetorotational and Tayler instability. Cordial thanks go to the current and former students and colleagues of the author at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, in particular to T. Albrecht, R. Avalos-Zuñiga, C. Kasprzyk, S. Eckert, M. Fischer, J. Forbriger, V. Galindo, F. Garcia, G. Gerbeth, A. Giesecke, T. Gundrum, U. Günther, J. Herault, G. Horstmann, P. Jüstel, E. Kaplan, M. Klevs, N. Krauter, O. Kirillov, V. Kumar, K. Liu, G. Mamatsashvili, A. Mishra, J. Ogbonna, M. Ratajczak, S. Röhrborn, J. Szklarski, M. Seilmayer, J. Šimkanin, T. Vogt, T. Weier, N. Weber, T. Wondrak and M. Xu, for all their help in solving a wide variety of problems in basic and applied magnetohydrodynamics. G. Gerbeth is also thanked for the constructive comments on the draft.
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Stefani, F. Liquid-metal experiments on geophysical and astrophysical phenomena. Nat Rev Phys 6, 409–425 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-024-00724-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-024-00724-1
