Integrated campaign to study the stationary inertial Alfvén wave in the laboratory and space regimes

A small, off-axis mesh-anode electrode at one plasma-column end is used to create a paraxial channel of electron current and depleted density in the large plasma device upgrade at UCLA. We show that the on-axis, larger, surroundingplasma column rotates about its cylindrical axis because a radial electric field is imposed by a multiple-segmented-disc termination electrode on the same end as the mesh-anode electrode. The radial profile of azimuthal velocity is shown to be consistent with predictions of rigid-body rotation. Launched inertial Alfvén waves are shown to concentrate in the off-axis channel of electron current and depleted plasma density. In the absence of launched waves, time varying boundary conditions, or spatially structured boundary conditions, a non-fluctuating, non-traveling pattern in the plasma density is shown to arise spontaneously in the channel, but only in the combined presence of electron current, density depletion, and spontaneously in the channel, crossfield convection (i.e. rotation). These results may be relevant to the stationary Alfvén wave in the inertial regime in space and laboratory plasmas. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)