English

Convective, absolute and global azimuthal magnetorotational instabilities

Fluid Dynamics 2021-08-04 v1 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Plasma Physics

Abstract

We study the convective and absolute forms of azimuthal magnetorotational instability (AMRI) in a Taylor-Couette (TC) flow with an imposed azimuthal magnetic field. We show that the domain of the convective AMRI is wider than that of the absolute AMRI. Actually, it is the absolute instability which is the most relevant and important for magnetic TC flow experiments. The absolute AMRI, unlike the convective one, stays in the device, displaying a sustained growth that can be experimentally detected. We also study the global AMRI in a TC flow of finite height using DNS and find that its emerging butterfly-type structure -- a spatio-temporal variation in the form of upward and downward traveling waves -- is in a very good agreement with the linear stability analysis, which indicates the presence of two dominant absolute AMRI modes in the flow giving rise to this global butterfly pattern.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.13470,
  title  = {Convective, absolute and global azimuthal magnetorotational instabilities},
  author = {A. Mishra and G. Mamatsashvili and V. Galindo and F. Stefani},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.13470},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

11 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in J. Fluid Mech. Rapids