Magnetic Field Interactions on Crow Instability

Previous studies have observed that the passage of a shock through a heavy gas cylinder forms two distinct, counter-rotating vortex cores, which consequently may experience the Crow instability. As a result, the cores are drawn to one another and perturbations grow until the cores interact and pinch off into a series of vortex rings and clumps of heavy gas. In high energy density experiments that study this phenomenon, the cylinder is instead composed of plasma, and the presence of magnetic fields may alter the dynamics. Therefore, the objective of this study is to quantify the effect of external and self-generated magnetic fields on the growth rate of the Crow instability through linear stability analysis. The results of this model are verified with magnetohydrodynamic simulations using an in-house code.