The linear marginal instability of an axisymmetric MHD Taylor-Couette flow of infinite vertical extension is considered. For flows with a resting outer cylinder there is a well-known characteristic Reynolds number even without magnetic field but for sufficiently weak magnetic fields there are solutions with smaller Reynolds numbers so that a characteristic minimum exists. The minimum only exist...

This work is devoted to the study of transient growth of perturbations in the Taylor–Couette problem due to linear nonnormal mechanisms. The study is carried out for a particular small gap case and is mostly focused on the linearly stable regime of counter-rotation. The exploration covers a wide range of inner and outer angular speeds as well as axial and azimuthal modes. Significant transient ...

Nonlinear equilibrium states characterized by strongly localized vortex pairs are calculated in the linearly stable parameter region of counterrotating Taylor-Couette flow. These subcritical states are rotating waves whose region of existence is consistent with the critical threshold for relaminarization observed in experiments. For sufficiently rapid outer cylinder rotation the solutions exten...

We consider the linear temporal stability of a Couette flow of a Maxwell gas within the gap between a rotating inner cylinder and a concentric stationary outer cylinder both maintained at the same temperature. The neutral curve is obtained for arbitrary Mach (Ma) and arbitrarily small Knudsen (Kn) numbers by use of a ‘slip-flow’ continuum model and is verified via comparison to direct simulatio...

A volume penalization approach to simulate magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flows in confined domains is presented. Here the incompressible visco-resistive MHD equations are solved using parallel pseudo-spectral solvers in Cartesian geometries. The volume penalization technique is an immersed boundary method which is characterized by a high flexibility for the geometry of the considered flow. In the p...

The interaction of steady-state and Hopf bifurcations in the presence of O(2) symmetry generically gives a secondary Hopf bifurcation to a family of 2-tori, from the primary rotating wave branch. We present explicit formulas for the coefficients which determine the direction of bifurcation and the stability of the 2-tori. These formulas show that the tori are determined by third-degree terms in...

We conduct a global, weakly nonlinear analysis of the magnetorotational instability (MRI) in a Taylor-Couette flow. This is a multiscale perturbative treatment of the nonideal, axisymmetric MRI near threshold, subject to realistic radial boundary conditions and cylindrical geometry. We analyze both the standard MRI, initialized by a constant vertical background magnetic field, and the helical M...

The flow of a magnetic fluid placed inside a small gap between concentric rotating cylinders is investigated for axial, radial and azimuthal magnetic fields. An equation of motion is derived phenomenologically to describe the hydrodynamics of magnetic fluids. Studied are the changes in the critical Taylor number T~ and wave number kc which characterize the instability of primary circular Couett...

In this article, we derive a rigorous characterization of the boundary-layer and interior separations in the Taylor-Couette-Poiseuille (TCP) flow. The results obtained provide a rigorous characterization on how, when and where the propagating Taylor vortices (PTV) are generated. In particular, contrary to what is commonly believed, we show that the PTV do not appear after the first dynamical bi...