%0 Journal Article
%T Explaining the coexistence of large-scale and small-scale magnetic fields in fully convective stars
%A Rakesh K. Yadav
%A Ulrich R. Christensen
%A Julien Morin
%A Thomas Gastine
%A Ansgar Reiners
%A Katja Poppenhaeger
%A Scott J. Wolk
%J Physics
%D 2015
%I arXiv
%R 10.1088/2041-8205/813/2/L31
%X Despite the lack of a shear-rich tachocline region low-mass fully convective stars are capable of generating strong magnetic fields, indicating that a dynamo mechanism fundamentally different from the solar dynamo is at work in these objects. We present a self-consistent three dimensional model of magnetic field generation in low-mass fully convective stars. The model utilizes the anelastic magnetohydrodynamic equations to simulate compressible convection in a rotating sphere. A distributed dynamo working in the model spontaneously produces a dipole-dominated surface magnetic field of the observed strength. The interaction of this field with the turbulent convection in outer layers shreds it, producing small-scale fields that carry most of the magnetic flux. The Zeeman-Doppler-Imaging technique applied to synthetic spectropolarimetric data based on our model recovers most of the large-scale field. Our model simultaneously reproduces the morphology and magnitude of the large-scale field as well as the magnitude of the small-scale field observed on low-mass fully convective stars.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.05541v1