The onset of oscillatory instability in a rotating layer of mercury heated from below and subject to a magnetic field

Abstract

A comparison is made between the predicted theoretical values of the Rayleigh number at the onset of instability in both the stationary and oscillatory modes with the observed experimental values of Nakagawa’s ( Proc. R. Soc. Lond . A 242, 81‒88 (1957)), when a layer of mercury is heated from below and simultaneously subjected to the effects of a magnetic field and rotation. The theoretical cell sizes and the gyration frequencies for the onset of oscillatory instabilities are also presented.