Publikationen

Spin-hydrodynamic coupling is a recently discovered method to directly generate electricity from an electrically conducting fluid flow in the absence of Lorentz forces. This method relies on a collective coupling of electron spins - the internal quantum-mechanical angular momentum of the electrons - with the local vorticity of a fluid flow. In this work, we experimentally investigate the spin-hydrodynamic coupling in circular- and noncircular-capillary pipe flows and extend a previously obtained range of Reynolds numbers to smaller and larger values, 20 < Re < 21500, using the conducting liquid-metal alloy (Ga,In)Sn as the working liquid. In particular, we provide experimental evidence for the linear dependence of the generated electric voltage with respect to the bulk-flow velocity in the laminar regime of the circular pipe flow as predicted by Matsuo et al. [Phys. Rev. B. 96, 020401 (2017)]. Moreover, we show analytically that this behavior is universal in the laminar regime regardless of the cross-sectional shape of the pipe. Finally, the proposed scaling law by Takahashi et al. [Nat. Phys. 12, 52 (2016)] for the generated voltage in turbulent circular pipe flows is experimentally evaluated at Reynolds numbers higher than in previous studies. Our results verify the reliability of the proposed scaling law for Reynolds numbers up to Re = 21500 for which the flow is in a fully developed turbulent state.

The effects of a vertical static magnetic field on the flow structure and global transport properties of momentum and heat in liquid metal Rayleigh-Bénard convection are investigated. Experiments are conducted in a cylindrical convection cell of unity aspect ratio, filled with the alloy GaInSn at a low Prandtl number of Pr = 0.029. Changes of the large-scale velocity structure with increasing magnetic field strength are probed systematically using multiple ultrasound Doppler velocimetry sensors and thermocouples for a parameter range that is spanned by Rayleigh numbers of 10^6 ≤ Ra 6 × 10^7 and Hartmann numbers of Ha ≤ 1000. Our simultaneous multi-probe temperature and velocity measurements demonstrate how the large-scale circulation is affected by an increasing magnetic field strength (or Hartmann number). Lorentz forces induced in the liquid metal first suppress the oscillations of the large-scale circulation at low Ha, then transform the one-roll structure into a cellular large-scale pattern consisting of multiple up- and downwellings for intermediate Ha, before finally expelling any fluid motion out of the bulk at the highest accessible Ha leaving only a near-wall convective flow that persists even below Chandrasekhar’s linear instability threshold. Our study thus proves experimentally the existence of wall modes in confined magnetoconvection. The magnitude of the transferred heat remains nearly unaffected by the steady decrease of the fluid momentum over a large range of Hartmann numbers. We extend the experimental global transport analysis to momentum transfer and include the dependence of the Reynolds number on the Hartmann number.

We study the fractal scaling of iso-level sets of a passive scalar mixed by three-dimensional homogeneous and isotropic turbulence at high Reynolds numbers. The scalar field is maintained by a linear mean scalar gradient, and the Schmidt number is unity. A fractal box-counting dimension DF can be obtained for iso-levels below about three standard deviations of the scalar fluctuation on either side of its mean value. The dimension varies systematically with the iso-level, with a maximum of about 8/3 for the iso-level at the mean scalar value; this maximum dimension also follows as an upper bound from the geometric measure theory. We interpret this result to mean that mixing in turbulence is incomplete. A unique box-counting dimension for all iso-levels results when we consider the spatial support of the steep cliffs of the scalar conditioned on local strain rate; that unique dimension, independent of the iso-level set, is about 4/3.