The Origin and Properties of Buoyant Magnetic Fields and Flux Tubes in the Sun

The solar magnetic activity cycle - visible on the solar surface in the form of the cyclic appearance of sunspots - is an example of an astrophysical dynamo: a system that regenerates its own magnetic field by tapping available thermal and kinetic energy. The detailed observations available for the solar dynamo makes it an ideal archetype for studying such dynamo processes. Understanding how to sustain a strong magnetic field at the bottom of the convection zone - and understanding the behavior of magnetic fields at the solar surface - probably constitute the most important problems on the way to an understanding of the solar dynamo. However, neither of these two problems can be solved completely as separate entities and they may certainly not be said to be understood if we do not understand what happens to the magnetic field from the time it is generated by the dynamo to when it is observed on the solar surface. Therefore, in this Thesis I examine the buoyant rise of the magnetic field from the bottom of the convection zone - by means of numerical simulation - in order to see if the predicted toroidal magnetic flux system is in fact consistent with what is observed at the solar surface.