Abstract
Magnetic fields are very common in the universe, and are now being confirmed to exist over very large scales, inside and outside of clusters of galaxies. They are usually strong, and often in equipartition or close to it with the thermal pressure and the cosmic ray pressure. There are numerous attempts to understand where they come from, and so far all we know is that the Sun seems to have no difficulty in reversing the sign of the magnetic field every 11 years or so. Therefore we describe a minimalistic theory, where stars inject magnetic fields into their environment, and then galaxies eject them into intergalactic space. However, how galaxies rearrange the chaotic magnetic fields injected from stars at small scales into very large scale patterns is still unclear; galaxies can increase their magnetic fields at a rate faster than their rotation, as demonstrated by starburst galaxies. The minimalistic theory described is therefore incomplete, and it is therefore unclear whether a speculative approach given here describes the possible path for a solution or not.
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Biermann, P.L. (2001). Cosmic Magnetic Fields. In: De Vega, H.J., Khalatnikov, I.M., Sànchez, N.G. (eds) Phase Transitions in the Early Universe: Theory and Observations. NATO Science Series, vol 40. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0997-3_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0997-3_26
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