Stability of a Rotating Compressible Stratified Plasma in the Presence of Hall Currents and Magnetic Resistivity

Abstract

The dynamic instability in a horizontal layer of a rotating compressible plasma of variable density has been investigated to examine the influence of the simultaneous presence of the effects of Hall currents and finite magnetic resistivity. The linearized stability analysis has been carried out through the normal mode technique. 33y making use of the existence of a variational principle which is shown to characterize the problem, proper solutions have been obtained for a semiinfinite plasma in which there is an exponential density gradient along the vertical. The dispersion relation obtained has been solved numerically and it is found that both the resistivity and the H~l l currents have a destabilizing influence as the growth rate of the unstable disturbances increases with increasing values of the parameters characterizing these effects. On the other hand, the Coriolis forces are found to have a stabilizing influence for in this case the growth rate decreases with increasing rotation.