Kelvin–Helmholtz Instability in the Solar Atmosphere, Solar Wind and Geomagnetosphere

Abstract

Modern views on the nature of the Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH) instability and its manifestations in the solar corona, in the interplanetary medium, and at the geomagnetospheric boundary are under consideration. We briefly describe the main theoretical results of the KH instability obtained in the linear approximation. Analysis of observational data, confirming the occurrence of the KH instability in magnetic formations of the solar coronal plasma and on the daytime magnetopause, was mainly performed in the approximation of incompressibility. We show that the Rayleigh–Taylor instability can significantly enhance the KH instability in the above regions due to interface accelerations or its curvature. Special attention is focused on the compressibility effect on the supersonic shear flow instability in the solar wind (SW) and at the geomagnetic tail boundary where this instability is usually considered to be ineffective. We have shown that the phase velocity of oblique perturbations is substantially less than the flow velocity, and values of the growth rate and frequency range are considerably higher than when only taking velocity-aligned disturbances into account. We emphasize that the magnetic field and plasma density inhomogeneity which weaken the KH instability of subsonic shear flows, in the case of a supersonic velocity difference weaken the stabilizing effect of the medium compressibility, and can significantly increase the instability. Effective generation of oblique disturbances by the supersonic KH instability explains the observations of magnetosonic waves and the formation of diffuse shear flows in the SW and on the distant magnetotail boundary, as well as the SW-magnetosphere energy and impulse transfer.