On the Hydromagnetic Stability of a Nonuniformly Rotating Fluid

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The stability of nonuniformly rotating mercury has been studied experimentally in the presence of an axial magnetic field. A cylindrically symmetric flow of mercury was driven by a volume force originating from the magnetic field and radial currents in the fluid. Concentric electrodes at the bottom of the mercury container made it possible to vary the current distribution and thus to produce different types of velocity profiles in the fluid. The electric field induced in the rotating mercury was used to measure the fluid velocity. The results of the experiments can be explained by a criterion for stability being deduced by approximate methods. It is a modification of a criterion given by Chandrasekhar for a dissipative Couette flow.