Alfv\'en wave experiments with liquid rubidium in a pulsed magnetic field

Magnetic fields are key ingredients for heating the solar corona to temperatures of several million Kelvin. A particularly important region with respect to this is the so-called magnetic canopy below the corona, where sound and Alfv\'en waves have roughly the same speed and can, therefore, easily transform into each other. We present the results of an Alfv\'en-wave experiment with liquid rubidium carried out in a pulsed field of up to 63 T. At the critical point of 54 T, where the speeds of Alfv\'en waves and sound coincide, a new 4 kHz signal appears in addition to the externally excited 8 kHz torsional wave. This emergence of an Alfv\'en wave with a doubled period is in agreement with the theoretical predictions of a parametric resonance between the two wave types. We also present preliminary results from numerical simulations of Alfv\'en and magneto-sonic waves using a compressible MHD code.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Mode Conversion and Period Doubling at Plasma-β\beta Unity in an Alfv\'en-Wave Experiment with Liquid Rubidium

We report Alfv\'en-wave experiments with liquid rubidium at the Dresden High Magnetic Field Laboratory (HLD). Reaching up to 63 T, the pulsed magnetic field exceeds the critical value of 54 T at which the Alfv\'en speed becomes equal to the sound speed (plasma-$\beta$ unity). At this threshold we observe a period doubling of an applied 8 kHz CW excitation, a clear footprint for a parametric resonance between magnetosonic waves and Alfv\'en waves.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Results of a modified PROMISE experiment

Key words magnetic fields – magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) The PROMISE experiment relies on the fact that the critical Reynolds number for the appearance of the magnetorotational instability (MRI) in liquid metal flows drastically decreases when the purely axial magnetic field is replaced by a helical one. We report the results of a modified version of this experiments in which the radial electrical boundary conditions are changed. Special focus is laid on the role of the radial jet region where the two Ekman vortices from the top and the bottom meet each other. c ○ 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim