Current gradient driven flute vortices in magnetized plasmas
Abstract
It is shown that an external electron current gradient in a nonuniform magnetized plasma can drive a purely growing instability involving coupled convective cells and magnetostatic modes. Accounting for the mode coupling, it is demonstrated that the quasistationary state of the unstable flute modes can lead to a spatially ordered dipolar vortex structure. The latter could alter the transport properties and it may also be responsible for a relaxed state in a force-free magnetized plasma.
- Publication:
-
Physics of Fluids
- Pub Date:
- July 1987
- DOI:
- 10.1063/1.866204
- Bibcode:
- 1987PhFl...30.1901S
- Keywords:
-
- Current Distribution;
- Magnetohydrodynamic Stability;
- Nonuniform Plasmas;
- Plasma Currents;
- Plasma-Electromagnetic Interaction;
- Vortices;
- Coupled Modes;
- Force-Free Magnetic Fields;
- Magnetostatic Fields;
- Plasma Dynamics;
- Transport Properties;
- Plasma Physics