Advected fields in maps. I: Magnetic flux growth in the stretch-fold-shear map (Q1599050)

The author investigates the role of the stretch-fold-shear (SFS) mechanism in producing fast dynamos with two-dimensional but not confined to a plane flows, for zero-magnetic diffusion. A combination of analytical and numerical techniques is used to establish growth rates with error bounds. It is shown that the SFS map is a perfect dynamo: for sufficiently large shear, the adjoint operator has smooth, growing eigenfunctions, and so smooth flux averages grow exponentially with time for zero diffusion.