Alfvénic modes excited by the kink instability in PHASMA

Magnetic flux ropes have been successfully created with plasma guns in the newly commissioned PHAse Space MApping (PHASMA) experiment. The flux ropes exhibit the expected m = 1 kink instability. The observed threshold current for the onset of this kink instability is half of the Kruskal–Shafranov current limit, consistent with predictions for the non-line tied boundary condition of PHASMA. The helicity, paramagnetism, and growth rate of the observed magnetic fluctuations are also consistent with kink instability predictions. The observed fluctuation frequency appears to be a superposition of a real frequency due to a Doppler shift of the kink mode arising from plasma flow (∼2 kHz) and a contribution from a wave mode (∼5 kHz). The dispersion of the wave mode is consistent with an Alfvén wave. Distinct from most previous laboratory studies of flux ropes, the working gas in PHASMA is argon. Thus, the ion cyclotron frequency in PHASMA is quite low and the frequency of the Alfvénic mode plateaus at ∼0.5 of the ion gyro frequency with increasing background magnetic field strength.