Ion Heating and Flow Driven by an Instability Found in Plasma Couette Flow

We present the first observation of instability in weakly magnetized, pressure dominated plasma Couette flow firmly in the Hall regime. Strong Hall currents couple to a low frequency electromagnetic mode that is driven by high-β (>1) pressure profiles. Spectroscopic measurements show heating (fac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2021-05, Vol.126 (18), p.185002-185002, Article 185002
Main Authors: Milhone, J, Flanagan, K, Egedal, J, Endrizzi, D, Olson, J, Peterson, E E, Wright, J C, Forest, C B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
Couette flow
Flow stability
Heating
Landau damping
Physics
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Summary:We present the first observation of instability in weakly magnetized, pressure dominated plasma Couette flow firmly in the Hall regime. Strong Hall currents couple to a low frequency electromagnetic mode that is driven by high-β (>1) pressure profiles. Spectroscopic measurements show heating (factor of 3) of the cold, unmagnetized ions via a resonant Landau damping process. A linear theory of this instability is derived that predicts positive growth rates at finite β and shows the stabilizing effect of very large β, in line with observations.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.185002