Chandrasekhar–Kendall function
Axisymmetric eigenfunctions / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Chandrasekhar–Kendall functions are the eigenfunctions of the curl operator derived by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and P. C. Kendall in 1957 while attempting to solve the force-free magnetic fields.[1][2] The functions were independently derived by both, and the two decided to publish their findings in the same paper.
If the force-free magnetic field equation is written as , where is the magnetic field and is the force-free parameter, with the assumption of divergence free field, , then the most general solution for the axisymmetric case is
where is a unit vector and the scalar function satisfies the Helmholtz equation, i.e.,
The same equation also appears in Beltrami flows from fluid dynamics where, the vorticity vector is parallel to the velocity vector, i.e., .