Surface Instabilities on Liquid Oxygen in an Inhomogeneous Magnetic Field

TL;DR

This paper investigates how inhomogeneous magnetic fields induce surface instabilities in liquid oxygen, demonstrating that a magnetic field gradient effectively alters gravity and influences pattern formation on the liquid's surface.

Contribution

The study introduces the concept of an 'effective gravity' to describe magnetic field gradient effects on liquid oxygen surface instabilities, expanding understanding of magnetic-fluid interactions.

Findings

Magnetic field gradients increase the threshold for pattern formation.

Surface pattern length scales decrease with stronger magnetic field gradients.

Effective gravity can be varied from 1g to 360g in experiments.

Abstract

Liquid oxygen exhibits surface instabilities when subjected to a sufficiently strong magnetic field. A vertically oriented magnetic field gradient both increases the magnetic field value at which the pattern forms and shrinks the length scale of the surface patterning. We show that these effects of the field gradient may be described in terms of an ``effective gravity'', which in our experiments may be varied from 1g to 360g.