Abstract | Small-scale vortical flows in the solar atmosphere have attracted increasing attention over the past
decade. What kind of vortical motions are these, how to formally describe them, what is their physical
nature, how do they propagate, what is their energetics? These are questions that became addressed with
the help of numerical simulations. This talk concentrates on two types of vortical flows: the so called
“magnetic tornadoes” and vortex tubes at the edges of granules. The latter are thought to have relevance
for the small-scale dynamo in the surface layers of the convection zone. |