Emergent kink stability of a magnetized plasma jet injected into a transverse background magnetic field

Abstract

We report experimental results on the injection of a magnetized plasma jet into a transverse background magnetic field in the HelCat linear plasma device at the University of New Mexico [M. Gilmore et al., J. Plasma Phys. 81, 345810104 (2015)]. After the plasma jet leaves the plasma-gun muzzle, a tension force arising from an increasing curvature of the background magnetic field induces in the jet a sheared axial-flow gradient above the theoretical kink-stabilization threshold. We observe that this emergent sheared axial flow stabilizes the n=1 kink mode in the jet, whereas a kink instability is observed in the jet when there is no background magnetic field presented.