Abstract
The effects of various seed magnetic fields on the dynamics of cylindrical and spherical implosions in ideal magnetohydrodynamics are investigated. Here, we present a fundamental investigation of this problem utilizing cylindrical and spherical Riemann problems under three seed field configurations to initialize the implosions. The resulting flows are simulated numerically, revealing rich flow structures, including multiple families of magnetohydrodynamic shocks and rarefactions that interact non-linearly. We fully characterize these flow structures, examine their axi- and spherisymmetry-breaking behaviour, and provide data on asymmetry evolution for different field strengths and driving pressures for each seed field configuration. We find that out of the configurations investigated, a seed field for which the implosion centre is a saddle point in at least one plane exhibits the least degree of asymmetry during implosion. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.