Solar and Stellar Dynamos

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the current understanding of the dynamo processes that generate magnetic fields in the Sun and other stars with outer convection zones. Magnetic fields are responsible for the restless activity of the Sun, which include the coming and going of sunspots throughout its 11-year activity cycle, the heating of the solar corona, and the driving forces behind huge eruptions of mass and energy that can affect near-Earth space and terrestrial technical systems. Likewise, other stars show such activity, often even much more energetically as their solar counterparts. The review papers collected in this volume are written by experts in this research field. The papers deliver introductions to the observational results on solar and stellar magnetic fields and provide detailed presentations on the theoretical concepts and models for self-excited dynamo processes and the underlying flow patterns that cause the emergence, structure, and evolution of magnetic patterns at the surfaces of the Sun and other stars. Comprehensive and realistic numerical simulations have become an indispensable tool for understanding the turbulent processes in stellar interiors as well as for testing analytical approaches and simplified models. Readers looking for a comprehensive and up-to-date account of this dynamic research field will find a most valuable collection of reviews; serving both as an introduction for newcomers in the field as well as a timely compendium for the active researcher. The book is a spin-off from the Topical Collection "Solar and Stellar Dynamos: A New Era" of the journal Space Science Reviews.