Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2012-01-11
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
6 pages, 3 figures
Scientific paper
The Tayler instability (TI) is experimentally realized in a liquid-metal flow confined in a columnar container with an insulating outer cylinder. To predict the critical electrical current and the expected growth rates, simulations with MHD codes are used for a container with an inner cylinder whose radius is small or even zero. The very small magnetic Prandtl number of the gallium alloy (Pm\simeq 10^{-6}) only influences the growth rates rather than the critical field amplitudes. It is thus allowed to calculate the critical Hartmann numbers for marginal instability also with direct numerical simulations. The theoretical value of the critical electric current of 2.8 kA, resulting from both linear theory and simulations, is well confirmed by the experiment. Also the predicted (small) growth rates of the nonaxisymmetric kink-type perturbations are certified by the observed data. Due to the rather long growth times of order of minutes, the resulting Joule heating might excite convective modes forming a saturation mechanism of the observed TI.
Gellert Marcus
Gerbeth Gunter
Gundrum Thomas
Ruediger Guenther
Schultz Manfred
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