Linear instability of Z-pinch in plasma: Viscous case.

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 scaled variational framework to study its stability in the presence of viscosity effect, and demonstrate that any such z -pinch is always unstable. We also establish the existence of a largest growing mode, which dominates the linear growth of the linear MHD system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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