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Does the inner core conductivity matter while modeling planetary dynamos?

The Earth’s magnetic field protects us from high energy particles emitted by solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the Sun. The field is generated in the Earth's fluid outer core through dynamo action. In this process, convection and differential rotation of an electrically conducting fluid maintain the magnetic field against its ohmic decay. Using numerical models, we can investigate planetary dynamo processes and the importance of various core properties on the dynamo. In this talk, we investigate numerical dynamo models in Earth-like geometry in order to understand the influence of inner core conductivity. We show that a conducting inner core can reduce the frequency of reversals and produce axial-dipolar dominated fields in our models. We also demonstrate that a strong planetary magnetic field intensity does not imply that the dynamo operates in the strong field regime as is usually presumed.