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Updated: May 3, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Observations of modified three-dimensional instability structure for imploding z-pinch liners that are premagnetized
T J Awe1, R D McBride1, C A Jennings1
1Sandia National Laboratories, P.O. Box 5800, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185, USA.
Abstract:
Novel experimental data are reported that reveal helical instability formation on imploding z-pinch liners that are premagnetized with an axial field. Such instabilities differ dramatically from the mostly azimuthally symmetric instabilities that form on unmagnetized liners. The helical structure persists at nearly constant pitch as the liner implodes. This is surprising since, at the liner surface, the azimuthal drive field presumably dwarfs the axial field for all but the earliest stages of the experiment. These fundamentally 3D results provide a unique and challenging test for 3D-magnetohydrodynamics simulations.
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