Ion heating and flow driven by an Instability found in Plasma Couette Flow

Abstract

We present the first observation of instability in weakly magnetized, pressure dominated plasma Couette flow firmly in the Hall regime. Strong Hall currents couple to a low frequency electromagnetic mode that is driven by high-$\beta$ ($>1$) pressure profiles. Spectroscopic measurements show heating (factor of 3) of the cold, unmagnetized ions via a resonant Landau damping process. A linear theory of this instability is derived that predicts positive growth rates at finite $\beta$ and shows the stabilizing effect of very large $\beta$, in line with observations.

submitted for review to PRL on 3/10/2021