Intrinsic rotation of toroidally confined magnetohydrodynamics

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 Oct 26;109(17):175002. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.175002. Epub 2012 Oct 23.

Abstract

The spatiotemporal self-organization of viscoresistive magnetohydrodynamics in a toroidal geometry is studied. Curl-free toroidal magnetic and electric fields are imposed. It is observed in our simulations that a flow is generated, which evolves from dominantly poloidal to toroidal when the Lundquist numbers are increased. It is shown that this toroidal organization of the flow is consistent with the tendency of the velocity field to align with the magnetic field. Up-down asymmetry of the geometry causes the generation of a nonzero toroidal angular momentum.