Many of the celestial bodies we know are found to be magnetized:the Earth, many of the planets so far discovered, the Sun and other stars,the interstellar space, the Milky Way and other galaxies.The reason for that is still to be fully understood, and this work is meant to be a step in that direction.

The dynamics of the interstellar medium is dominated by events likesupernovae explosions that can be modelled as irrotational flows.The first part of this thesis is dedicated to the analysis of some characteristics of these flows, in particular how they influencethe typical turbulent magnetic diffusivity of a medium, and it is shownthat the diffusivity is generally enhanced, except for some specific casessuch as steady potential flows, where it can be lowered.Moreover, it is examined how such flows can develop vorticity when they occur in environments affected by rotation or shear,or that are not barotropic.

Secondly, we examine helical flows, that are of basic importance for the phenomenon of the amplification of magnetic fields, namely the dynamo.Magnetic helicity can arise from the occurrence of an instability: here we focus on theinstability of purely toroidal magnetic fields, also known as Tayler instability.It is possible to give a topological interpretation of magnetic helicity.Using this point of view, and being aware that magnetic helicity is a conserved quantity in non-resistive flows,it is illustrated how helical systems preserve magnetic structureslonger than non-helical ones.

The final part of the thesis deals directly with dynamos.It is shown how to evaluate dynamo transport coefficients with two of the most commonly used techniques, namely theimposed-field and the test-field methods.After that, it is analyzed how dynamos are affected by advectionof magnetic fields and material away from the domain in which theyoperate.It is demonstrated that the presence of an outflow, likestellar or galactic winds in real astrophysical cases,alleviates the so-calledcatastrophic quenching, that is the damping of a dynamoin highly conductive media, thus allowing the dynamo process to work better.

The broad variety of ways in which magnetic helicity affects astrophysical systems, in particular dynamos, is discussed.

The so-called alpha effect is responsible for the growth of large-scale magnetic fields. The conservation of magnetic helicity, however, quenches the alpha effect, in particular for high magnetic Reynolds numbers. Predictions from mean-field theories state particular power law behavior of the saturation strength of the mean fields, which we confirm in direct numerical simulations. The loss of magnetic helicity in the form of fluxes can alleviate the quenching effect, which means that large-scale dynamo action is regained. Physically speaking, galactic winds or coronal mass ejections can have fundamental effects on the amplification of galactic and solar magnetic fields.

The gauge dependence of magnetic helicity is shown to play no effect in the steady state where the fluxes are represented in form of gauge-independent quantities. This we demonstrate in the Weyl-, resistive- and pseudo Lorentz-gauge. Magnetic helicity transport, however, is strongly affected by the gauge choice. For instance the advecto-resistive gauge is more efficient in transporting magnetic helicity into small scales, which results in a distinct spectrum compared to the resistive gauge.

The topological interpretation of helicity as linking of field lines is tested with respect to the realizability condition, which imposes a lower bound for the spectral magnetic energy in presence of magnetic helicity. It turns out that the actual linking does not affect the relaxation process, unlike the magnetic helicity content. Since magnetic helicity is not the only topological variable, I conduct a search for possible others, in particular for non-helical structures. From this search I conclude that helicity is most of the time the dominant restriction in field line relaxation. Nevertheless, not all numerical relaxation experiments can be described by the conservation of magnetic helicity alone, which allows for speculations about possible higher order topological invariants.