THE BIERMANN CATASTROPHE IN NUMERICAL MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS

The Biermann Catastrophe in Numerical Magnetohydrodynamics

The Biermann battery effect is frequently invoked in cosmic magnetogenesis and studied in high-energy density laboratory physics experiments. Generation of magnetic fields by the Biermann effect due to misaligned density and temperature gradients in smooth flow behind shocks is well known. We show that a Biermann-effect magnetic field is also generated within shocks. Direct implementation of th...

The Biermann catastrophe of numerical MHD

The Biermann Battery effect is frequently invoked in cosmic magnetogenesis and studied in High-Energy Density laboratory physics experiments. Unfortunately, direct implementation of the Biermann effect in MHD codes is known to produce unphysical magnetic fields at shocks whose value does not converge with resolution. We show that this convergence breakdown is due to naive discretization, which ...

Can non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics solve the magnetic braking catastrophe?

We investigate whether or not the low ionisation fractions in molecular cloud cores can solve the ‘magnetic braking catastrophe’, where magnetic fields prevent the formation of circumstellar discs around young stars. We perform three-dimensional smoothed particle non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations of the gravitational collapse of one solar mass molecular cloud cores, incorporating...

Implicit Numerical Methods for Magnetohydrodynamics

Anisotropic diffusion in mesh-free numerical magnetohydrodynamics

We extend recently developed mesh-free Lagrangian methods for numerical magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) to arbitrary anisotropic diffusion equations, including: passive scalar diffusion, Spitzer–Braginskii conduction and viscosity, cosmic ray diffusion/streaming, anisotropic radiation transport, non-ideal MHD (Ohmic resistivity, ambipolar diffusion, the Hall effect) and turbulent ‘eddy diffusion’. W...