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A concise review is given of astrophysically motivated experimental and theoretical research on Taylor–Couette flow. The flows of interest rotate differentially with the inner cylinder faster than the outer, but are linearly stable against Rayleigh’s inviscid centrifugal instability. At shear Reynolds numbers as large as 10 6 , hydrodynamic flows of this type (quasi-Keplerian) appear to be nonlinearly stable: no turbulence is seen that cannot be attributed to interaction with the axial boundaries, rather than the radial shear itself. Direct numerical simulations agree, although they cannot yet reach such high Reynolds numbers. This result indicates that accretion-disc turbulence is not purely hydrodynamic in origin, at least insofar as it is driven by radial shear. Theory, however, predicts linear magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities in astrophysical discs: in particular, the standard magnetorotational instability (SMRI). MHD Taylor–Couette experiments aimed at SMRI are challenged by the low magnetic Prandtl numbers of liquid metals. High fluid Reynolds numbers and careful control of the axial boundaries are required. The quest for laboratory SMRI has been rewarded with the discovery of some interesting inductionless cousins of SMRI, and with the recently reported success in demonstrating SMRI itself using conducting axial boundaries. Some outstanding questions and near-future prospects are discussed, especially in connection with astrophysics. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Taylor–Couette and related flows on the centennial of Taylor’s seminal Philosophical Transactions paper (part 2)’. 

Abstract The production cross-section of a top quark in association with a W boson is measured using proton–proton collisions at $$\sqrt{s} = 8\,\text {TeV}$$ s = 8 TeV . The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of $$20.2\,\text {fb}^{-1}$$ 20.2 fb - 1 , and was collected in 2012 by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The analysis is performed in the single-lepton channel. Events are selected by requiring one isolated lepton (electron or muon) and at least three jets. A neural network is trained to separate the tW signal from the dominant $$t{\bar{t}}$$ t t ¯ background. The cross-section is extracted from a binned profile maximum-likelihood fit to a two-dimensional discriminant built from the neural-network output and the invariant mass of the hadronically decaying W boson. The measured cross-section is $$\sigma _{tW} = 26 \pm 7\,\text {pb}$$ σ tW = 26 ± 7 pb , in good agreement with the Standard Model expectation. 

Abstract Jet energy scale and resolution measurements with their associated uncertainties are reported for jets using 36–81 fb $$^{-1}$$ - 1 of proton–proton collision data with a centre-of-mass energy of $$\sqrt{s}=13$$ s = 13   $${\text {Te}}{\text {V}}$$ TeV collected by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Jets are reconstructed using two different input types: topo-clusters formed from energy deposits in calorimeter cells, as well as an algorithmic combination of charged-particle tracks with those topo-clusters, referred to as the ATLAS particle-flow reconstruction method. The anti- $$k_t$$ k t jet algorithm with radius parameter $$R=0.4$$ R = 0.4 is the primary jet definition used for both jet types. This result presents new jet energy scale and resolution measurements in the high pile-up conditions of late LHC Run 2 as well as a full calibration of particle-flow jets in ATLAS. Jets are initially calibrated using a sequence of simulation-based corrections. Next, several in situ techniques are employed to correct for differences between data and simulation and to measure the resolution of jets. The systematic uncertainties in the jet energy scale for central jets ( $$|\eta |<1.2$$ | η | < 1.2 ) vary from 1% for a wide range of high- $$p_{{\text {T}}}$$ p T jets ( $$2502.5~{\text {Te}}{\text {V}}$$ > 2.5 TeV ). The relative jet energy resolution is measured and ranges from ( $$24 \pm 1.5$$ 24 ± 1.5 )% at 20  $${\text {Ge}}{\text {V}}$$ GeV to ( $$6 \pm 0.5$$ 6 ± 0.5 )% at 300  $${\text {Ge}}{\text {V}}$$ GeV .