Cosmological magnetic fields from primordial helicity

Nov, 1998
10 pages
Published in:
  • Phys.Rev.D 62 (2000) 103008
e-Print:
Report number:
  • NSF-ITP-98-098

Citations per year

1999200520112017202302468101214
Abstract: (arXiv)
Primordial magnetic fields may account for all or part of the fields observed in galaxies. We consider the evolution of the magnetic fields created by pseudoscalar effects in the early universe. Such processes can create force-free fields of maximal helicity; we show that for such a field magnetic energy inverse cascades to larger scales than it would have solely by flux freezing and cosmic expansion. For fields generated at the electroweak phase transition, we find that the predicted wavelength today can in principle be as large as 10 kpc, and the field strength can be as large as 10^{-10} G.
  • cosmological model
  • magnetic field: production
  • magnetic field: time dependence
  • effect: pseudoscalar
  • helicity
  • energy: magnetic
  • energy: density
  • electroweak interaction: critical phenomena
  • numerical calculations