The anisotropy of kinetic and current helicity

Abstract

A three-dimensional model for thermal convection with a dynamo in a rotating planar layer heated from below is used to investigate the behavior of the mean kinetic and current helicities. In spite of the presence of gravity and rotation, which introduce anisotropy into the system, the components of the helicity determined from the field components in the directions tangent and normal to the boundary have similar values. The existence of a separation by scale, when the current helicity has different signs on different spatial scales, is demonstrated. The number of regions where the sign of the helicity does not coincide with the sign of its mean value in that region is estimated (∼43−45% of the total number of regions). The estimates presented are relevant for interpretations of observations of solar activity and analysis of the properties of rotating magnetohydrodynamical turbulence.