Elliptical flow instability in a conducting fluid triggered by an external magnetic field.

We demonstrate that arbitrarily weak magnetic field may cause violent instability of an anticyclonic, recirculating flow with uniform mean angular velocity. This magnetohydrodynamic instability would trigger turbulence in the cores of vortices where neither centrifugal, exchange instability, nor magnetorotational instability is effective. In the accretion disk vortices this can be an important mechanism of enhanced outward transport of angular momentum.