TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rüdiger, Günther
A1  - Schultz, Manfred
A1  - Hollerbach, Rainer
T1  - Destabilization of super-rotating Taylor-Couette flows by current-free helical magnetic fields
JF  - Journal of plasma physics
N2  - In an earlier paper we showed that the combination of azimuthal magnetic fields and super-rotation in Taylor-Couette flows of conducting fluids can be unstable against non-axisymmetric perturbations if the magnetic Prandtl number of the fluid is Pm not equal 1. Here we demonstrate that the addition of a weak axial field component allows axisymmetric perturbation patterns for Pm of order unity depending on the boundary conditions. The axisymmetric modes only occur for magnetic Mach numbers (of the azimuthal field) of order unity, while higher values are necessary for the non-axisymmetric modes. The typical growth time of the instability and the characteristic time scale of the axial migration of the axisymmetric mode are long compared with the rotation period, but short compared with the magnetic diffusion time. The modes travel in the positive or negative z direction along the rotation axis depending on the sign of B phi Bz. We also demonstrate that the azimuthal components of flow and field perturbations travel in phase if vertical bar B phi vertical bar >> vertical bar B-z vertical bar, independent of the form of the rotation law. Within a short-wave approximation for thin gaps it is also shown (in an appendix) that for ideal fluids the considered helical magnetorotational instability only exists for rotation laws with negative shear.
KW  - plasma instabilities
KW  - astrophysical plasmas
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022377821000295
SN  - 1469-7807
VL  - 87
IS  - 2
PB  - Cambridge University Press
CY  - London
ER  -