Toward fully compressible numerical simulations of stellar magneto-convection with the RAMSES code

Abstract: Numerical simulations of magneto-convection have greatly expanded our understanding of stellar interiors and stellar magnetism. Recently, fully compressible hydrodynamical simulations of full-star models have demonstrated the feasibility of studying the excitation and propagation of pressure and internal gravity waves in stellar interiors, which would allow for a direct comparison with asteroseismological measurements. However, the impact of magnetic fields on such waves has not been taken into account yet in three-dimensional simulations. We conduct a proof of concept for the realization of three-dimensional, fully compressible, magneto-hydrodynamical numerical simulations of stellar interiors with the RAMSES code. We adapted the RAMSES code to deal with highly subsonic turbulence, typical of stellar convection, by implementing a well-balanced scheme in the numerical solver. We then ran and analyzed three-dimensional hydrodynamical and magneto-hydrodynamical simulations with different resolutions of a plane-parallel convective envelope on a Cartesian grid. Both hydrodynamical and magneto-hydrodynamical simulations develop a quasi-steady, turbulent convection layer from random density perturbations introduced over the initial profiles. The convective flows are characterized by small-amplitude fluctuations around the hydrodynamical equilibrium of the stellar interior, which is preserved over the whole simulation time. Using our compressible well-balanced scheme, we were able to model flows with Mach numbers as low as $\mathcal{M} \sim 10^{-3}$, but even lower Mach number flows are possible in principle. In the magneto-hydrodynamical runs, we observe an exponential growth of magnetic energy consistent with the action of a small-scale dynamo. (Abridged)