Tubular Pinch and Tearing Instability

Two Fluid Dynamo and Edge-Resonant m=0 Tearing Instability in Reversed Field Pinch

Current-driven tearing instabilities dominate magnetic relaxation in self-organized high temperature plasmas such as the reversed field pinch (RFP) and spheromak. In the Madison Symmetric Torus (MST) RFP experiments, they are observed in the form of magnetic field, flow velocity, and current density fluctuations that follow a temporally cyclic sawtooth behavior. During a sawtooth crash, a surge...

Tearing instability in relativistic magnetically dominated plasmas

Many astrophysical sources of high energy emission, such as black hole magnetospheres, superstrongly magnetized neutron stars (magnetars), and probably relativistic jets in Active Galactic Nuclei and Gamma Ray Bursts involve relativistically magnetically dominated plasma. In such plasma the energy density of magnetic field greatly exceeds the thermal and the rest mass energy density of particle...

Resistive tearing instability with equilibrium shear flow

The effect of equilibrium velocity shear on the resistive tearing instability has been systematically studied, using the boundary layer approach. Both the "constant-f/!" tearing mode, which has a growth rate that scales as S -3/5, and the "nonconstant-f/!" tearing mode [a' (as) -1/3» 1], which has a growth rate that scales as S -1/3, are analyzed in the presence of flow. Here S is the usual rat...

Resistive tearing mode instability with shear flow and viscosity

The linear theory of the resistive tearing mode instability in slab geometry, has been recently extended by introducing the effect of equilibrium shear flow and viscosity [ Phys. Fluids 29, 2563 (1986); Phys. Fluids B 1,2224 (1989); ibid. 2,495 (1990); ibid. 2,2575 (1990) 1. In the present analysis, numerical solutions of the time-dependent resistive equations are generalized to this problem an...

First-order finite-Larmor-radius fluid modeling of tearing and relaxation in a plasma pinch