Energy principle and the interstellar medium. II - Curved equilibria

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

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Bernstein Energy Principle, Cosmic Rays, Interstellar Gas, Interstellar Magnetic Fields, Magnetohydrodynamic Stability, Stellar Gravitation, Hydrostatics, Perturbation Theory

Scientific paper

The hydromagnetic energy principle developed by Bernstein et al. is used to test the stability of two-dimensional equilibrium configurations of the interstellar gas, magnetic field, and cosmic rays in the presence of the gravitational field of the stars. Stability criteria, involving only one flux tube, are derived for a gas with an adiabatic index equal to 1; they concern perturbations which have a very short scale in the direction perpendicular to the plane of the lines of force and which are either 'flute' or antisymmetric. A physical discussion of the mechanisms driving the instabilities is presented. The results are applied to two types of curved equilibria and give numerical evaluations of the growth rates of the instabilities affecting the equilibria calculated by Mouschovias; they can be comparable to those found by Parker for plane-parallel equilibria. The effect of two-dimensional perturbations with an infinite wavelength in the direction perpendicular to the plane of the lines of force is considered separately; such perturbations are shown to be less likely to lead to instabilities.

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