The Resistive Tearing-Mode Instability in Anisotropic Plasmas: Linear Theory

Physics – Plasma Physics

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

2724 Magnetopause, Cusp, And Boundary Layers, 7800 Space Plasma Physics, 7835 Magnetic Reconnection, 7843 Numerical Simulation Studies

Scientific paper

Tearing-mode instability may occur in various regions of space environment; for example, observational evidence has shown that the magnetopause current is often imbedded with a series of magnetic islands (Hau and Sonnerup, 1999). In this study, the tearing-mode instability of a tangential-discontinuity current layer is examined within the framework of two-dimensional, numerical, linear MHD model with anisotropic pressure which is the characteristic of space plasma as shown by the satellite data. The energy equations used to close the MHD model are the double-polytropic laws with two polytropic exponents, γ ∥ and γ perpendicular to , which for γ ∥ = 3, γ perpendicular to = 2 become the CGL laws and for γ ∥ = 1, γ perpendicular to = 1 describe the isothermal state (Hau et al., 1993). It is shown that the dependence of the linear growth rate on pperpendicular to /p∥ and γ ∥ , γ perpendicular to is consistent with the mirror instability criterion based on the double-polytropic MHD model (Hau and Sonnerup, 1993); in particular, the growth rate is larger for smaller values of γ ∥ and γ perpendicular to . For sufficiently large pperpendicular to /pallel$ greater than 1, the tearing perturbations no longer grow exponentially but contains oscillatory modes with the growth rate being greatly enhanced.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

The Resistive Tearing-Mode Instability in Anisotropic Plasmas: Linear Theory does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with The Resistive Tearing-Mode Instability in Anisotropic Plasmas: Linear Theory, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and The Resistive Tearing-Mode Instability in Anisotropic Plasmas: Linear Theory will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1277698

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.