Solar and Stellar Dynamos

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the current understanding of the dynamo processes that generate magnetic fields in the Sun and other stars with outer convection zones. Magnetic fields are responsible for the restless activity of the Sun, which include the coming and going of sunspots throughout its 11-year activity cycle, the heating of the solar corona, and the driving forces behind huge eruptions of mass and energy that can affect near-Earth space and terrestrial technical systems. Likewise, other stars show such activity, often even much more energetically as their solar counterparts. 

The review papers collected in this volume are written by experts in this research field. The papers deliver introductions to the observational results on solar and stellar magnetic fields and provide detailed presentations on the theoretical concepts and models for self-excited dynamo processes and the underlying flow patterns that cause the emergence, structure, and evolution of magnetic patterns at the surfaces of the Sun and other stars. Comprehensive and realistic numerical simulations have become an indispensable tool for understanding the turbulent processes in stellar interiors as well as for testing analytical approaches and simplified models.

Readers looking for a comprehensive and up-to-date account of this dynamic research field will find a most valuable collection of reviews; serving both as an introduction for newcomers in the field as well as a timely compendium for the active researcher.

The book is a spin-off from the Topical Collection "Solar and Stellar Dynamos: A New Era" of the journal Space Science Reviews.

Manfred Schüssler

Manfred Schüssler worked at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) as a Research Group Leader. Since his retirement in 2016  he is a guest scientist at MPS. His main research interests are the structure and dynamics of solar magnetic fields and dynamo theory of the solar cycle. His research methods are numerical simulations and analytical calculations, often with an emphasis on interpreting and understanding observational results. He was also involved in the preparation and realization of the “Sunrise” stratospheric balloon observatory. Manfred Schüssler authored and co-authored over 180 research papers in refereed journals and more than 40 review papers.

Robert H. Cameron

Robert Cameron studies how magnetic fields, plasma and radiation interact on the Sun and other stars. In particular, he is interested in how the magnetic field is generated and its role coupling the lower layers of stellar atmospheres. To these ends he uses numerical models and theory, but with a particular emphasis on understanding the observations.

Paul Charbonneau

Paul Charbonneau is professor of Physics at the Université de Montréal (Canada) since 2002. During the preceding decade he was a member of scientic staff of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's High Altitude Observatory, in Boulder (Colorado, U.S.A.). His research is primarily in the areas of computational physics and numerical simulations, focusing on magnetohydrodynamics, the dynamo mechanism underlying solar and stellar magnetic cycles, and the prediction of solar flares. He also pursues other research interests, notably in the intersection of physics and biology, the emergence of complexity in natural systems, including questions related the origin of life. He has authored or co-authored  over 150 research articles, review articles, and book chapters, and is the authors of two research monographs/textbooks entitled Solar and Stellar Dynamos (2013, Springer) and Natural Complexity (2017, Princeton University Press)

Mausumi Dikpati

Mausumi Dikpati, currently a senior scientist at HAO, came to NSF-NCAR in 1996 as an ASP Postdoc, after receiving her PhD in physics from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. She has since continued her career at NSF-NCAR. Mausumi’s primary research area has been global magnetohydrodynamics of the Sun, to simulate solar variability on time scales from a few days to several months, up to a decade, with recent focus on solar MHD Rossby waves, their implications for pre-solar-storm activity-patterns, and for predicting the “stormy seasons” of space weather. Her activities in the application of modern data assimilation methods to solar models, using the NCAR-DART framework in collaboration with CISL, have enabled her to win several large research grants. She won John Firor HAO Outstanding Publication award in 2007 for solar cycle prediction research and the Wenner-Gren guest professorship award from Stockholm in 2016. Her research on the extended minimum at the end of solar cycle 23 was recognized as one of the top 100 science-discoveries in 2011 by Discover Magazine. Mausumi has also been active in education and outreach as well as in various community services; she is currently serving on "Solar & Heliospheric Decadal Panel'' of the US National Academy.

Hideyuki Hotta

Hideyuki Hotta is currently a Professor at the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research at Nagoya University. He earned his Ph.D. in science from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 2014. Then, he worked at High Altitude Observatory, USA, and got a tenure track position at Chiba University, Japan, in 2015. Since 2023, he has been working at Nagoya University as a professor, where he has been since that time. His research interests are solar and stellar turbulence and magnetic fields. He mainly carries out numerical simulations with high-performance computing.

Leonid Kitchatinov

Leonid Kitchatinov received his Ph.D. from the Ioffe Institute of Physics and Technology, St. Petersburg. He is a specialist in stellar MHD and dynamo theory. He is permanently affiliated to the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Irkutsk, and in parallel to the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory, St. Petersburg. He has worked repeatedly at the Leibnitz Institute for Astrophysics, Potsdam, supported by either the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation or the Deuthsche Forshungsgemeinshaft. He has also spend a year as a research fellow at the University of St. Andrews, UK.