Linear instability of $Z$-pinch in plasma (I): Inviscid case

Abstract

The z-pinch is a classical steady state for the MHD model, where a confined plasma fluid is separated by vacuum, in the presence of a magnetic field which is generated by a prescribed current along the z direction. We develop a variational framework to study its stability in the absence of viscosity effect, and demonstrate for the first time that any such a z-pinch is always unstable. Moreover, we discover a sufficient condition such that the eigenvalues can be unbounded, which leads to ill-posedness of the linearized MHD system.