Tearing and Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities in the heliospheric plasma

Details Tearing and Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities in the heliospheric plasma Tearing and Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities in the heliospheric plasma

Jun 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006a%26a...452..321b&link_type=abstract

Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 452, Issue 1, June II 2006, pp.321-330

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

11

Instabilities, Magnetohydrodynamics (Mhd), Plasmas, Methods: Numerical, Sun: Solar Wind

Scientific paper

We used 2.5D simulations to analyze the magnetohydrodynamic instabilities arising from an initial equilibrium configuration consisting of a plasma jet or wake in the presence of a magnetic field with strong transverse gradients, such as those arising in the solar wind. Our analysis extends previous results by considering both a force-free equilibrium and a pressure-balance condition for a jet in a plasma sheet, along with arbitrary angles between the magnetic field and velocity field. In the force-free case, the jet/wake does not contain a neutral sheet but the field rotates through the flow to invert its polarity. The presence of a magnetic field component aligned with the jet/wake destroys the symmetric nature of the fastest growing modes, leading to asymmetrical wake acceleration (or, equivalently, jet deceleration). In the case of a jet, the instability properties depend both on the magnetic field and flow gradients, as well as on the length of the jet. The results are applied to the post-termination shock jet recently found in 3D global heliospheric simulations, where our analysis confirms and explains the stability properties found in such simulations.

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