A self-consistent dynamo model for fully convective stars
Résumé
The tachocline region inside the Sun, where the rigidly rotating radiative core meets the differentially rotating convection zone, is thought to be crucial for generating the Sun's magnetic field. Low-mass fully convective stars do not possess a tachocline and were originally expected to generate only weak small-scale magnetic fields. Observations, however, have painted a different picture of magnetism in rapidly-rotating fully convective stars: (1) Zeeman broadening measurements revealed average surface field of several kiloGauss (kG), which is similar to the typical field strength found in sunspots. (2) Zeeman-Doppler-Imaging (ZDI) technique discovered large-scale magnetic fields with a morphology often similar to the Earth's dipole-dominated field. (3) Comparison of Zeeman broadening and ZDI results showed that more than 80% of the magnetic flux resides at small scales. So far, theoretical and computer simulation efforts have not been able to reproduce these features simultaneously. Here we present a self-consistent global model of magnetic field generation in low-mass fully convective stars. 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 ZDI 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.