Intrinsic rotation from a residual stress at the boundary of a cylindrical laboratory plasma

Phys Rev Lett. 2010 Feb 12;104(6):065002. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.065002. Epub 2010 Feb 8.

Abstract

An azimuthally symmetric radially sheared azimuthal flow is driven by a nondiffusive, or residual, turbulent stress localized to a narrow annular region at the boundary of a cylindrical magnetized helicon plasma device. A no-slip condition, imposed by ion-neutral flow damping outside the annular region, combined with a diffusive stress arising from turbulent and collisional viscous damping in the central plasma region, leads to net plasma rotation in the absence of momentum input.