The Rayleigh Taylor instability of superposed partially-ionized plasmas

The Rayleigh-Taylor instability of the plane interface separating two superposed, partiallyionized, viscous plasmas of different densities has been studied to include the effects of finite Larmor radius. The solution of the relevant linearized perturbation equations has been developed by the Normal mode technique, taking the prevalent magnetic field to be uniform and horizontal. The potentially unstable case of a dense fluid superimposed on a lighter one has been considered. It is found that neutral gas friction, viscosity as well as finite Larmor radius all have stabilizing influence.On leave of absence from Department of Mathematics, University of Jodhpur, India.