Radiative stability of interstellar masers — A variational technique

This paper gives a generalised theory of hydromagnetic stability of the interface between two infinitely-conducting, compressible plasmas with the latter accelerated perpendicular to the interface and streaming parallel to the interface and subjected to a constant magnetic field parallel to the streaming direction. The method used is adapted from the one given by Plesset and Hsieh (1964) for the hydrodynamical case and the general dispersion relation is found to involve Whittaker's functions and their first derivatives. The familiar Rayleigh-Taylor and Kelvin-Helmholtz instability problems are recovered from the general dispersion relation in the appropriate special cases.