Nonaxisymmetric linear instability of cylindrical magnetohydrodynamic Taylor-Couette flow

Abstract

We consider the nonaxisymmetric modes of instability present in Taylor-Couette flow under the application of helical magnetic fields, mainly for magnetic Prandtl numbers close to the inductionless limit, and conduct a full examination of marginal stability in the resulting parameter space. We allow for the azimuthal magnetic field to be generated by a combination of currents in the inner cylinder and fluid itself, and introduce a parameter governing the relation between the strength of these currents. A set of governing eigenvalue equations for the nonaxisymmetric modes of instability are derived and solved by spectral collocation with Chebyshev polynomials over the relevant parameter space, with the resulting instabilities examined in detail. We find that by altering the azimuthal magnetic field profiles the azimuthal magnetorotational instability, nonaxisymmetric helical magnetorotational instability, and Tayler instability yield interesting dynamics, such as different preferred mode types, and modes with azimuthal wave number $m>1$. Finally, a comparison is given to the recent WKB analysis performed by Kirillov $et$ $al$. [Kirillov, Stefani, and Fukumoto, J. Fluid Mech. 760, 591 (2014)] and its validity in the linear regime.

11 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (8)

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• Experimental evidence for non-axisymmetric magnetorotational instability in a rotating liquid metal exposed to an azimuthal magnetic field
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• Short wavelength local instabilities of a circular Couette flow with radial temperature gradient
• Singular diffusionless limits of double-diffusive instabilities in magnetohydrodynamics
• Fully nonlinear mode competitions in magnetised Taylor-Couette flow
• Analysis of azimuthal magnetorotational instability of rotating MHD flows and Tayler instability via an extended Hain-Lust equation