Scale Selection in the Stratified Convection of the Solar Photosphere

We examine the role of stratification in determining the scale for turbulent anelastic convection. Motivated by the range of scales observed in convection at the solar photosphere, we perform local numerical simulations of convection for a range of density contrasts in large domains. We analyse both the Eulerian and Lagrangian statistics of the convection and demonstrate that increasing the stratification shifts the scale of the most energetic structures in the flow to smaller scales; furthermore, the relative amplitude of vertical to horizontal flows in the convection decreases with increasing stratification. We discuss the implications of our results to the issue of solar mesogranulation.
Comment: Submitted to ApJ