Reflections on magnetoconvection

Abstract

The interaction between magnetic fields and convection can be observed directly in stars like the Sun. This selective review uses idealized numerical experiments to illustrate and extend results obtained from bifurcation theory. It covers a wide variety of steady and time-dependent behaviour, in incompressible and compressible fluids, in two and three dimensions. These results illuminate behaviour that appears in recent “realistic” simulations of solar magnetoconvection.

Keywords:

• Magnetic fields
• convection
• sunspots

Acknowledgements

It is a pleasure to record my thanks to Mike Proctor, with whom I have enjoyed a cheerful and stimulating collaboration for several decades. So I am glad to contribute to this Festschrift in his honour. I also thank all the students, postdocs and colleagues who have contributed to our understanding of nonlinear magnetoconvection. I acknowledge too the support received at different times from SERC, PPARC and STFC, which made this research possible.