Kelvin-Helmholtz versus Hall Magneto-shear instability in astrophysical flows
arXiv:1405.6220 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.89.053105
Abstract
We study the stability of shear flows in a fully ionized plasma. Kelvin-Helmholtz is a well known, macroscopic and ideal shear-driven instability. In sufficiently low density plasmas, also the microscopic Hall magneto-shear instability can take place. We performed three-dimensional simulations of the Hall-MHD equations where these two instabilities are present, and carried out a comparative study. We find that when the shear flow is so intense that its vorticity surpasses the ion-cyclotron frequency of the plasma, the Hall magneto-shear instability is not only non-negligible, but it actually displays growth rates larger than those of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability.
References in corpus (9)
- Linear Analysis of the Hall Effect in Protostellar Disks
- Hydromagnetic turbulence in computer simulations
- On the Linear Stability of Weakly-Ionized, Magnetized Planar Shear Flows
- Energy transfer in Hall-MHD turbulence: cascades, backscatter, and dynamo action
- Direct simulations of helical Hall-MHD turbulence and dynamo action
- Zonal flow generation and its feedback on turbulence production in drift wave turbulence
- Hall-MHD small-scale dynamos
- Shear-driven instabilities in Hall-MHD plasmas
- Hall effect in a strong magnetic field: Direct comparisons of compressible magnetohydrodynamics and the reduced Hall magnetohydrodynamic equations