Time evolution of the 1D spatial average of enstrophy (upper panels) and azimuthal magnetic field (middle panels) for the runs in Table 2. The lower panels refer to the magnetic field attained in control runs, where ξ = 0. In all runs, the field is seen to grow first in the vortex, then in the surrounding flow. This shows that the growth rates of the magneto-elliptic instability are faster than those of the MRI. Vortex destruction is apparent in these plots as loss of spatial coherence in the enstrophy plots, and occurred in all simulations. The length of the time axis is the same for all simulations, except the control run for run S.