Investigation of the Rayleigh–Taylor instability in charged fluids

Abstract

The present study shows that the Rayleigh–Taylor (RT) instability and its growth rate are strongly dependent on the charge-mass ratio of charged particles in a charged fluid. A higher charge-mass ratio of the charged fluid appears to result in a stronger effect of the magnetic field to suppress the RT instability. We study the RT instabilities for both dusty plasma (small charge-mass ratio of charged particles) and ion-electron plasma (large charge-mass ratio of charged particles). It is found that the impact of the external magnetic field to suppress the RT instability for ion-electron plasma is much greater than that for dusty plasma. It is also shown that, for a dusty plasma, in addition to region parameters such as the external magnetic field, region length, its gradient, as well as dust particle parameters such as number density, mass, and charge of dust particles, the growth rate of the RT instability in a dusty plasma also depends on parameters of both electrons and ions such as the number densities and temperatures of both electrons and ions.