Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 62 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Choose the planar magnetic field convention , so and . The resistive induction equation, with constant magnetic diffusivity and a suitable time-dependent gauge constant removed, reduces to advection and diffusion of this Cartesian magnetic flux function:For the specified differential rotation, its mth azimuthal Fourier mode obeysThe physical field is the real part of the complex mode. Substitute . A direct radial differentiation givesOn the left, rigid rotation cancels, leaving . Equating the constant and quadratic coefficients yieldsThe initial condition fixes and , since the constant C was already factored out. Set . Then the exact quadratic-shear magnetic flux solution follows by differentiation:Indeed and . Also . For an unspecified initial normalization the second formula has a multiplicative constant , but here .
For and , choose . The asymptotic condition is : then tends to the finite constant and . At any fixed s, differentiating A to obtain the magnetic field multiplies it by factors involving and , which have no additional exponential time dependence. Therefore its envelope decays asUsing the paper's magnetic Reynolds number definition gives the precise scalingThus the decay time scales as for positive and fixed m. The mechanism is magnetic phase mixing under differential rotation: winding produces progressively fine radial structure on which magnetic diffusion acts efficiently. For negative , choose the square root with positive real part, replacing by in the decay time. If , the initial harmonic mode simply rotates, with , ; there is no shear-enhanced decay. The printed positive-root and Reynolds-number expressions implicitly use .