English

Experimental evidence for magnetorotational instability in a helical magnetic field

Astrophysics 2007-05-23 v1 Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

A recent paper [R. Hollerbach and G. Rudiger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 124501 (2005)] has shown that the threshold for the onset of the magnetorotational instability (MRI) in a Taylor-Couette flow is dramatically reduced if both axial and azimuthal magnetic fields are imposed. In agreement with this prediction, we present results of a Taylor-Couette experiment with the liquid metal alloy GaInSn, showing evidence for the existence of the MRI at Reynolds numbers of order 1000 and Hartmann numbers of order 10.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0606473,
  title  = {Experimental evidence for magnetorotational instability in a helical magnetic field},
  author = {Frank Stefani and Thomas Gundrum and Gunter Gerbeth and Günther Rüdiger and Manfred Schultz and Jacek Szklarski and Rainer Hollerbach},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0606473},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures