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Updated: Aug 25, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Hydrodynamic instabilities in ferronematics
A B Ryskin1, H Pleiner, H W Müller
1Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, PO Box 3148, 55021 Mainz, Germany.
Abstract:
In the hydrodynamic description of ferronematics there are various dynamic magnetic-field effects, linear in the field strength, that are negligible in usual nematics, but can play a role in ferronematics. Here, we investigate theoretically the influence of these new terms on the thermal convection (Rayleigh-Bénard) and the viscous fingering (Saffman-Taylor) instability in ferronematics in the presence of a strong magnetic field. We find that the instabilities are qualitatively changed due to the occurrence of a finite vorticity component--a feature that is known from simple liquids in the case of a superimposed mechanical rotation. We suggest to use the additional effects (cross-flow within convection rolls, oblique rolls, rotating fingers) for measuring the phenomenological coefficients involved.
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