On the hypdromagnetic stability of helical flows (Q1113752)

The object of this paper is to investigate the stability of a steady nondissipative MHD helical flow with velocity components (0,r\(\Omega\) (r),W(r)) of an incompressible fluid permeated by a helical magnetic field \((0,H_{\theta}(r),H_ z(r))\), where the components are along (r,\(\theta\),z) directions in a cylindrical coordinate system. Nonaxisymmetric disturbances to this flow generally twist the magnetic lines of force and produce an intimate coupling between rotational (arising out of swirl component \(r\Omega\) (r)) and hydromagnetic effects that prevent the latter from being masked however small the magnetic field. On the other hand axisymmetric disturbances only bend but do not twist the lines of force and when the swirl velocity is large the hydromagnetic effects become small compared with those due to the swirl. These considerations provide the motivation for studying the stability with respect to nonaxisymmetric disturbances of MHD helical flow which is likely to be of importance in problems of controlled thermonuclear reaction. Here a basic motion may either stabilize or destabilize the system [\textit{E. A. Frieman} and \textit{M. Rotenberg}, Rev. Mod. Phys. 32, 898-902 (1960; Zbl 0101.202)]. It may be noted that the presence of a velocity field in the basic state may lead to the phenomenon of overstability. This is reflected in the appearance of non-Hermitian operators in the stability analysis. This implies that the energy principle formalism derived by \textit{I. B. Bernstein}, \textit{E. A. Frieman}, \textit{M. D. Kruskal} and \textit{R. M. Kulsrud} [Proc. R. Soc. Lond., Ser. A 244, 17-40 (1958; Zbl 0081.217)] in MHD for a basic state with no motion ceases to hold in the present study. However, by using a theorem due to \textit{E. M. Barston} [Int. J. Eng. Sci. 18, 477-489 (1980; Zbl 0436.76018)] we derive several general results on the stability of nondissipative MHD helical flow.