English

Experiments on the magnetorotational instability in helical magnetic fields

Astrophysics 2008-11-26 v1

Abstract

The magnetorotational instability (MRI) plays a key role in the formation of stars and black holes, by enabling outward angular momentum transport in accretion disks. The use of combined axial and azimuthal magnetic fields allows the investigation of this effect in liquid metal flows at moderate Reynolds and Hartmann numbers. A variety of experimental results is presented showing evidence for the occurrence of the MRI in a Taylor-Couette flow using the liquid metal alloy GaInSn.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0701030,
  title  = {Experiments on the magnetorotational instability in helical magnetic fields},
  author = {Frank Stefani and Thomas Gundrum and Gunter Gerbeth and Günther Rüdiger and Jacek Szklarski and Rainer Hollerbach},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0701030},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

15 pages, 13 figures, submitted to New Journal of Physics

R2 v1 2026-07-22T09:18:06.901Z