Riga dynamo experiment and its theoretical background

Abstract

It is widely believed that almost all magnetic fields in a natural environment are the result of the dynamo process—the field generation in moving nearly homogeneous electro-conducting fluids. This dynamo process occurs in the depths of celestial bodies such as the Earth, most of the planets, the Sun, other stars, and even galaxies. The Riga dynamo experiment is not intended as a model of any particular celestial body. It aims at demonstrating the basic dynamo mechanism—that the intense motion in a large volume of a good electro-conducting liquid creates a magnetic field. In the present paper, the set-up and the main results of this experiment are presented, with some focus on the theoretical interpretation of the data.