Magnetic Rayleigh-Taylor Instability in Radiative Flows

Abstract

We present a linear analysis of the radiative Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability in the presence of magnetic field for both optically thin and thick regimes. When the flow is optically thin, magnetic field not only stabilizes perturbations with short wavelengths, but also growth rate of the instability at long wavelengths is reduced compared to a nonmagnetized case. Then, we extend our analysis to the optically thick flows with a conserved total specific entropy and properties of the unstable perturbations are investigated in detail. Growth rate of the instability at short wavelengths is suppressed due to the presence of the magnetic field, however, growth rate is nearly constant at long wavelengths because of the radiation field. Since the radiative bubbles around massive protostars are subject to the RT instability, we also explore implications of our results in this context. In the nonmagnetized case, the growth time-scale of the instability for a typical bubble is found less than one thousand years which is very short compared to the typical star formation time-scale. Magnetic field with a reasonable strength significantly increases the growth time-scale to more than hundreds of thousands years. The instability, furthermore, is more efficient at large wavelengths, whereas in the non-magnetized case, growth rate at short wavelengths is more significant.

arXiv comment10 pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (22)

• The Formation of Massive Star Systems by Accretion
• The Dynamics of Radiation Pressure-Dominated HII Regions
• Thermohaline instability and rotation-induced mixing. I - Low- and intermediate-mass solar metallicity stars up to the end of the AGB
• Direct Numerical Simulation of Radiation Pressure-Driven Turbulence and Winds in Star Clusters and Galactic Disks
• Clumpy Outflow from Supercritical Accretion Flows
• An Unstable Truth: How Massive Stars get their Mass
• Local Radiative Hydrodynamic and Magnetohydrodynamic Instabilities in Optically Thick Media
• Simulating the Formation of Massive Protostars: I. Radiative Feedback and Accretion Disks
• The Magnetic Field in the Star-forming Region Cepheus A from Water Maser Polarization Observations
• On the stability of radiation-pressure-dominated cavities
• Incorporation of cosmic ray transport into the ZEUS MHD code. Application for studies of Parker instability in the ISM
• Radiative Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities
• Radiation Hydrodynamic Instability in Plane-Parallel, Super-Eddington Atmosphere: A Mechanism for Clump Formation
• The Parker Instability in Disk Galaxies
• Rayleigh-Taylor instability in partially ionized compressible plasmas: one fluid approach
• On the Rayleigh-Taylor Instability of Radio Bubbles in Galaxy Clusters
• Non-linear Evolution of Rayleigh-Taylor Instability in a Radiation Supported Atmosphere
• Photon Bubbles in the Circumstellar Envelopes of Young Massive Stars
• The role of Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities in filament threads
• Radiatively driven Rayleigh-Taylor instability candidates around a forming massive star system: NACO adaptive optics and VISIR study of G333.6-0.2
• Rayleigh-Taylor instability in an ionized medium
• Rayleigh-Taylor Instability in a Compressible Fluid

Cited by in corpus (2)

• The Origin of Massive Stars: The Inertial-Inflow Model
• Ionising Feedback Effects on Star Formation in Globular Clusters with Multiple Stellar Populations