My graduate student, Daegene Koh, submitted his first paper to MNRAS two months ago, titled “Amplification of Magnetic Fields in a Primordial HII Region and Supernova”. Late last week, we resubmitted the paper after making revisions after a favorable referee report, and posted it on arXiv today. Here we run a suite of three simulations, focusing on the amplification of magnetic fields during the generation of the ionized region and in the aftermath of its supernova. We find that through small-scale dynamo action the magnetic field grows primarily when the supernova blastwave can cool efficiently, fragments, and becomes turbulent. On average, the fields are amplified by a factor of 100 in the remnant shell and up to a factor of 106 within the shock. These strengthened fields will propagate into the first generations of galaxies, possibly affecting the nature of their star formation.
Congratulations, DK, on your first paper!