Dynamo driven magnetic fields in the interstellar medium

Poster for the conference "New Perspectives on Galactic Magnetism"

We model supernova (SN) driven turbulence in the multi-phase interstellar medium (ISM) to explore the dynamo in a differentially rotating section of the galactic disk. Using a small seed field SN explosions drive a turbulent dynamo and the rotation & shear drive a large scale dynamo, the interactions of which have been poorly understood and rarely included in dynamo modelling. Our resulting field is, therefore, physically derived and embedded differentially within the cold (∼100 K), warm (∼10⁴ K) and hot (∼10⁶ K) phases of the ISM, and exhibits scale separation between its random and large scale components.

We consider a domain in excess of 1 kiloparsec (kpc) horizontally and up to 2 kpc either side of the galactic disk, with parsec scale resolution. Such modelling enables us to better interpret the role of the magnetic field in the large scale structure of the ISM, its impact on the various phases of the ISM and how phase affects the composition and structure of the mean and random components of the magnetic field.