Scale Selection in the Stratified Convection of the Solar Photosphere

M. Kessar, D. W. Hughes, E. Kersale, K. A. Mizerski, S. M. Tobias

Published 2018-02-05Version 1

In this paper we examine the role of stratification in setting the scale for turbulent anelastic convection. Motivated by the range of scales observed in convection at the solar photosphere, we perform local numerical simulations of convection for a range of density contrasts in large domains. We analyse both the Eulerian and Lagrangian statistics of the convection and demonstrate that increasing the stratification shifts the scale of the most energetic structures in the flow to smaller scales; furthermore the relative amplitude of vertical to horizontal flows in the convection decreases with increasing stratification.