The magnetohydrodynamic stability of axially unbounded cylindrical flows is considered which contain a toroidal magnetic background field with the same radial profile as the linear azimuthal velocity. Chandrasekhar (1956) has shown for ideal fluids the stability of this configuration if the Alfven velocity of the field equals the velocity of the background flow. It is demonstrated for magnetized Taylor-Couette flows at the Rayleigh line, however, that for finite diffusivity such flows become unstable against nonaxisymmetric perturbations where the critical magnetic Reynolds number of the rotation rate does not depend on the magnetic Prandtl number Pm if Pm much << 1. In order to study this new diffusive azimuthal magnetorotational instability, flows and fields with the same radial profile but with different amplitudes are considered. For Pm << 1 the instability domain with the weakest fields and the slowest rotation rates lies below the Chandrasekhar line of equal amplitudes for Alfven velocity and rotation velocity. We find that then the lines of marginal instability scale with the Reynolds number and the Hartmann number. The minimum values of the field strength and the rotation rate which are needed for the instability (slightly) grow for more and more flat rotation. Finally, the corresponding electric current of the background field becomes so strong that the Tayler instability (which even exists without rotation) also appears in the bifurcation map at small Hartmann numbers displacing after all the azimuthal magnetorotational instability.
Calibrating the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method with numerical simulations: uncertainties in estimating the magnetic field strength from statistics of field orientations
Synthetic polarization observations of magnetized pillars in HII regions: Assessing the reliability of the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method
Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica(国家天文学、光学和电子学研究所);Secretaría de Ciencia, Humanidades, Tecnología e Innovación (SECIHTI)(科学、人文、技术与创新秘书处);Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Astronomía(墨西哥国立自治大学天文研究所);Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica(墨西哥国立自治大学射电天文学与天体物理研究所)