Magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor Instability in an Experiment Simulating a Solar Loop

A hoop force driven magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor instability (MRTI) is observed in a laboratory experiment that simulates a solar coronal loop. Increase of the axial wavelength λ is observed when the axial magnetic field increases. This scaling is consistent with the theoretical MRTI growth rate, which implies that if ALT="${\boldsymbol{k}}$" SRC="apjlab6b2dieqn2.gif"/ is parallel to ALT="${{\boldsymbol{B}}} {0}$" SRC="apjlab6b2dieqn3.gif"/ (i.e., undular mode), the fastest-growing mode has .