Dynamo Effect in the Kraichnan Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence

The existence of a dynamo effect in a simplified magnetohydrodynamic model of turbulence is considered when the magnetic Prandtl number approaches zero or infinity. The magnetic field is interacting with an incompressible Kraichnan-Kazantsev model velocity field which incorporates also a viscous cutoff scale. An approximate system of equations in the different scaling ranges can be formulated and solved, so that the solution tends to the exact one when the viscous and magnetic-diffusive cutoffs approach zero. In this approximation we are able to determine analytically the conditions for the existence of a dynamo effect and give an estimate of the dynamo growth rate. Among other things we show that in the large magnetic Prandtl number case the dynamo effect is always present. Our analytical estimates are in good agreement with previous numerical studies of the Kraichnan-Kazantsev dynamo by Vincenzi (J. Stat. Phys. 106:1073–1091, 2002).