Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/iii/paper-64/3/b/solution

For an axisymmetric vertical mode of a shearing sheet with real , the two divergence constraints give . The vertical momentum equation then yields . Thus all three amplitudes vanish:
Define the magnetic amplitudes and the signed vertical Alfvén velocity . Write . The remaining equations for the normal mode are
For a growing or oscillatory mode with , eliminating gives
A nonzero velocity requires the determinant to vanish. After removing its factor , the dynamical dispersion relation is
This is the radially stratified magnetorotational dispersion relation, with . Keeping the original five-amplitude system instead gives characteristic polynomial times this quartic. There is also a stationary balanced normal mode; division by excludes it but loses no exponentially growing mode. At the divergence argument for vanishing vertical components does not apply, so that spatially uniform case must be treated separately.

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