Reduction of boundary effects in spiral MRI experiment PROMISE

Abstract

Magnetorotational instability (MRI) is one of the most important and most common instabilities in astrophysics, it is widely accepted that it serves as a source of turbulent viscosity in accretion disks -- the most energy efficient objects in the Universe. However it is very difficult to bring this process down on earth and model it in a laboratory experiment. Several different approaches have been proposed, one of the most recent is PROMISE (Potsdam-ROssendorf Magnetorotational InStability Experiment). It consists of a flow of a liquid metal between two rotating cylinders under applied current-free spiral magnetic field. The cylinders must be covered with plates which introduce additional end-effects which alter the flow and make it more difficult to clearly distinguish between MRI stable and unstable state. In this paper we propose simple and inexpensive improvement to the PROMISE experiment which would reduce those undesirable effects.

arXiv comment8 pages, 9 figures. Accepted to AN

References in corpus (8)

• Hydrodynamic turbulence cannot transport angular momentum effectively in astrophysical disks
• Magnetorotational Instability in a Rotating Liquid Metal Annulus
• Experimental evidence for magnetorotational instability in a helical magnetic field
• New type of magneto-rotational instability in cylindrical Taylor-Couette flow
• Helical Magnetorotational Instability in Magnetized Taylor-Couette Flow
• MHD instability in differentially rotating cylindric flows
• The linear MHD Taylor-Couette instability for liquid sodium
• The traveling wave MRI in cylindrical Taylor-Couette flow: comparing wavelengths and speeds in theory and experiment

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Helical magnetorotational instability in a Taylor-Couette flow with strongly reduced Ekman pumping
• Magnetohydrodynamic experiments on cosmic magnetic fields
• Stability and instability of hydromagnetic Taylor-Couette flows
• On the relation of standard and helical magnetorotational instability
• The Ekman-Hartmann layer in MHD Taylor-Couette flow
• Numerical Study of the Magnetorotational Instability in Princeton MRI Experiment
• Noise-Sustained Convective Instability in a Magnetized Taylor-Couette Flow
• Quasi-two-dimensional nonlinear evolution of helical magnetorotational instability in a magnetized Taylor-Couette flow
• Pseudo--magnetorotational instability in a Taylor-Dean flow between electrically connected cylinders