Instabilities of conducting fluid layers in cylindrical cells under the external forcing of weak magnetic fields

J. Burguete - M. A. Miranda

Department of Physics and Applied Mathematics, Universidad de Navarra, Irunlarrea 1, E-31008 Pamplona, Spain

Abstract
In this work, we analyze recent results concerning the instabilities created in a layer of liquid metal by the action of time-dependent magnetic fields. The experimental setup allows the characterization of different patterns very close to the threshold. For very low frequencies of the forcing field, the axisymmetric fluid layer destabilizes with different azimuthal wavenumbers. An improved analysis allows the characterization of different patterns for interaction parameter values as low as 5·10⁻³. Figs 7, Refs 7.