Modulational instability of electron-acoustic waves in relativistically degenerate quantum plasma

Using the Quantum hydrodynamic (QHD) model the modulational instability of electron-acoustic waves (EAWs) has been examined theoretically by deriving a nonlinear Schrodinger equation in a two-electron-populated relativistically degenerate super dense plasma. Through numerical analysis it is shown that the relativistic degeneracy parameter significantly influence the stability conditions and the formation and properties of the envelop solitons.     

The physics of thermal instability in two dimensions

Previous studies of a thermal (radiative) instability in a sheared magnetic field have shown that, under solar coronal conditions, cool condensations can form in a small neighborhood about the shear layer. Such results have served to model the formation of solar filaments (or prominences) observed to occur above photospheric magnetic polarity-inversion lines. A surprising conclusion of these studies is that the width of the condensation does not depend on the thermal conductivity (). By examining the mass-flow patterns of two-dimensional condensations in the absence of thermal conduction, we demonstrate that local plasma dynamics and the constraints imposed by boundary conditions are together sufficient to explain the size of the condensation width. In addition we present the results of a series of numerical calculations which illustrate the characteristic mode structure of sheared-field condensations.     

Thermal instability in ionized plasma

We study the magneto-thermal instability in ionized plasmas including the effects of Ohmic, ambipolar and Hall diffusion. The magnetic field in the single-fluid approximation does not allow for transverse thermal condensations; however, non-ideal effects highly diminish the stabilizing role of the magnetic field in thermally unstable plasmas. Therefore, the enhanced growth rate of thermal condensation modes in the presence of the diffusion mechanisms speed up the rate of structure formation.     

Whistler instability in anti-loss-cone plasma

Whistler mode can become unstable above electron cyclotron frequency, Ω in anti-loss-cone plasma observed beyond the plasmapause. The growth rate can be as high as 0.1 Ω.     

Two-stream instability in a collisionless plasma

This paper discusses the development of two-stream instability in a collisionless plasma. The plasma is described by velocity moments of Vlasov equation where heat flow tensor has been neglected. A dispersion relation for arbitrary propagation is derived for a collisionless electron fluid. Special cases of propagation parallel and perpendicular to the field lines are discussed. Growth rate is computed for parameters representative of the shear layers of solar wind at one AU. It is found that the shear layers are likely to be overstable.     

The loss-cone driven instability for Langmuir waves in an unmagnetized plasma

Analytic and numerical results are presented for the growth rate of Langmuir waves due to a loss-cone distribution of energetic electrons. The effect of the magnetic field on the wave-particle interaction is ignored, and the resonance condition is described in terms of a resonance hyperboloid in momentum space. The collisional evolution of a distribution of magnetically trapped electrons is followed numerically to show how a gap distribution develops. The growth is most favorable for an intermediate sized loss cone ( 45 °) and a gap distribution in which the mean energy of the suprathermal electrons is much larger than the thermal energy of the background electrons. It is plausible that loss-cone gap distributions do develop in the solar corona, and that they should lead to second harmonic plasma emission weakly polarized in the x-mode.     

Current-driven dust-acoustic instability in a collisional plasma

The excitation of the dust-acoustic instability in a collisional dusty plasma is investigated. For conditions similar to those of recent laboratory experiments with neutral gas pressures of 100mTorr, it is found that zero-order electric fields E₀ 10 Vm⁻¹ are sufficient for the growth of perturbations with centimeter wavelengths. Much larger wavelengths generally require larger values of E₀. Free electrons in the dusty plasma have a stabilizing effect, which can be very pronounced at the longest wavelengths.     

Gravitational instability of a rotating plasma

The gravitational instability of an infinite homogeneous self-gravitating rotating plasma in the presence of a uniform vertical magnetic field has been studied to include the FLR effects. It has been found that the Jeans' criterion of instability remains unaffected even if rotation and FLR effects are included. The effect of rotation is to decrease the Larmor radius by an amount-depending upon the wavenumber of perturbation. The particular cases of the effect of FLR and rotation on the waves propagated along and perpendicular to the magnetic field have been discussed.     

Gravitational instability of a heat-conducting plasma

The gravitational instability of an infinite, anisotropic, heat-conducting plasma is studied in this paper. It is found that, for the case of parallel propagation, the inclusion of heat-conduction terms in the fluid equations, in general, leads to overstability of the system, whereas the transverse propagation remains unaffected. We have solved numerically the dispersion relation corresponding to the parallel propagation and find that except for a range of wave numbers, the system is overstable. We also found that in the limit of vanishing zeroth-order heat flux, the condition for gravitational instability is similar to the Jeans's condition for instability for an isotropic plasma.     

Modified Jeans instability of magnetized viscous spin 1/2 quantum plasma with resistive effects and Hall current

Properties of ion acoustic solitons head-on collision in an ultracold neutral plasma composed of ion fluid and non-Maxwellian electron distributions are investigated. For this purpose, the extended Poincare-Lighthill-Kuo (PLK) method is employed to derive coupled Kortweg-de Vries (KdV) equations describing the system. The nonlinear evolution equations for the colliding solitons and corresponding phase shifts are investigated both analytically and numerically. It is found that the polarity of the colliding solitons strongly depends on the type of the non-Maxwellian distribution (via nonthermal or superthermal electron distributions). Especially the phase shift due to solitons collision is strongly influenced by the non-Maxwellian distribution. A new critical nonthermal parameter β _c , characterizing the nonthermal electron distribution, and which is not present for superthermal particle distributions, allows the existence of double polarity of the solitons. The phase shift increases below β _c for compressive solitons, but it decreases above β _c for rarefactive soliton. For superthermal distribution the phase shift increases rapidly for low spectral index κ, whereas for higher values of κ, the phase shift decreases smoothly and becomes nearly stable for κ>10. Around β _c and small values of κ, the deviation from the Maxwellian state is strongest, and therefore the phase shift has unexpected behavior due to the presence of more energetic electrons that are represented by the non-Maxwellian distributions. The nonlinear structure, as reported here, could be useful for controlling the solitons that may be created in future ultracold neutral plasma experiments.     

Gravitational instability in isotropic MHD plasma waves

The effect of compressive viscosity, thermal conductivity and radiative heat-loss functions on the gravitational instability of infinitely extended homogeneous MHD plasma has been investigated. By taking in account these parameters we developed the six-order dispersion relation for magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves propagating in a homogeneous and isotropic plasma. The general dispersion relation has been developed from set of linearized basic equations and solved analytically to analyse the conditions of instability and instability of self-gravitating plasma embedded in a constant magnetic field. Our result shows that the presence of viscosity and thermal conductivity in a strong magnetic field substantially modifies the fundamental Jeans criterion of gravitational instability.     

Gravitational instability of suprathermal hydromagnetic plasma

The paper models the suprathermal plasma as the concatenation of two different gravitating fluids each having its own separate density and pressure. One of the fluids has isotropic pressure while the other has an anisotropic pressure. The system is subjected to a uniform magnetic field which is frozen with the fluids. The gravitational instability of the model for low frequency plane waves has been investigated in a linear framework for plasma parameters relevant to the spiral arms of the galaxy and the cosmic gas clouds. The analysis shows that the wavelength of the instability is strongly dependent upon the anisotropy of the non-thermal plasma.     

Thermal instability in a weakly ionized plasma

We revisit the problem of clump formation due to thermal instabilities in a weakly ionized plasma with the help of a linear perturbation analysis, as discussed by Nejad-Asghar & Ghanbari. In the absence of a magnetic field and ambipolar diffusion the characteristic equation reduces to the thermal instability described by Field. We derive the critical wavelengths, which separate the spatial ranges of stability and instability. Contrary to the original analysis of Nejad-Asghar & Ghanbari, perturbations with a wavelength larger than the critical wavelength destabilize the cloud. Moreover, the instability regime of isentropic perturbations is drastically reduced. Isobaric modes with real values of the critical wavelength appear only if the density dependence of the cooling rate is more pronounced than the temperature dependence. Isentropic modes arise only if the power of the density in the cooling rate is smaller than 1/2, which is not fulfilled for CO cooling. We find that ambipolar diffusion is not a dominating heating process in molecular gas.     

Electromagnetic instability in collisionless anisotropic plasma contrastreams

The electromagnetic instability in collisionless, anisotropic magnetized plasma contrastreams for perturbations propagating normally to the ambient magnetic field is investigated. It is found that the parallel temperature stabilizes the configuration forT _‖≤T _⊥ while it shows destabilizing effect forT _‖>T _⊥. A comparative study of the growth rates associated with various coexisting modes reveals that the electromagnetic instability may, under certain conditions, be associated with larger growth rates than the electrostatic instability.     

Thermosolutal instability of a partially-ionized plasma

The thermosolutal instability of a partially-ionized plasma in the presence of a horizontal magnetic field is considered to include the frictional effect of collisions of ionized with neutrals. The sufficient conditions for non-existence of overstability are derived. The solute gradient and magnetic field introduce oscillatory modes in thermosolutal convection which were non-existent in their absence. The magnetic field and stable solute gradient are found to have stabilizing effects whereas collisional effect of ionized with neutrals is found to have destabilizing effect on thermosolutal instability of a partially ionized plasma.     

Electromagnetic wave instability in a relativistic electron-positron-ion plasma

By employing the anisotropic plasma distribution function, the stability of circularly polarized electromagnetic (EM) waves is studied in a relativistically hot electron-positron-ion (e-p-i) plasma, investigating two specific scenarios. First, linear dispersion relations associated with the transverse EM waves are analyzed in different possible frequency regimes. The expression of the aperiodic hydrodynamic instability is obtained and numerically the transverse EM modes are shown to grow exponentially. Secondly, we have found that the transverse electromagnetic wave interact with a collisionless anisotropic e-p-i plasma and damp through the nonlinear Landau damping phenomena. Taking the effects of the latter into consideration, a kinetic nonlinear Schrödinger equation is derived with local and nonlocal nonlinearities, computing the damping rates. The present work should be helpful to understand the linear and nonlinear properties of the intense EM waves in hot relativistically astrophysical plasmas, e.g., pulsars, black holes, neutron stars, etc.