From helical to standard magnetorotational instability: Predictions for upcoming liquid sodium experiments

This work is a first preparatory theoretical study for upcoming magnetorotational instability (MRI) experiments with liquid sodium planned within the DRESDYN project. Therefore, we focus on the characteristics of MRI for typical values of the main parameters of the basic magnetized Taylor-Couette (TC) flow achievable in these experiments. In contrast to previous attempts at finding MRI in the laboratory, our results clearly indicate that standard MRI and its helically modified version can be detected for the first time in the DRESDYN-TC device, including the astrophysically important Keplerian rotation, despite the very small magnetic Prandtl number of liquid sodium.