Shear Flow Instabilities in Low-Beta Space Plasmas |
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Authors: | Taras Siversky Yuriy Voitenko Marcel Goossens |
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Affiliation: | (1) Centre for Plasma Astrophysics, K.U. Leuven, Heverlee, Belgium |
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Abstract: | We study instabilities driven by a sheared plasma flow in the low-frequency domain. Two unstable branches are found: the ion-sound mode and the kinetic Alfvén mode. Both instabilities are aperiodic. The ion-sound instability does not depend on the plasma β (gas/magnetic pressure ratio) and has a maximum growth rate of about 0.1 of the velocity gradient dV 0/dx. On the other hand, the kinetic Alfvén instability is stronger for larger β and dominates the ion-sound instability for β > 0.05. Possible applications for space plasmas are shortly discussed. |
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Keywords: | shear flows plasma instabilities kinetic Alfvén wave ion-sound wave |
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