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Updated: Jun 7, 2025

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Magnetic Taylor-Proudman Constraint Explains Flows into the Tangent Cylinder
Alban Pothérat1, Kélig Aujogue1, François Debray2
1<a href="https://ror.org/01tgmhj36">Coventry University</a>, Centre for Fluid and Complex Systems, Mile Lane, Coventry CV1 2NL, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
Tangent cylinders (TCs) have shaped our understanding of planetary dynamos and liquid cores. The Taylor-Proudman constraint creates these imaginary surfaces because of planetary rotation, separating polar and equatorial regions, but cannot explain the flows meandering through them. Here, we establish and verify experimentally that magnetic fields aligned with rotation drive flows into TCs, linked to the flows along TCs by a magnetic Taylor-Proudman constraint. This constraint explains and quantifies how magnetic fields reshape rotating flows in planetary interiors and magnetorotating flows in general.
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