On the two-fluid modification of the resistive tearing instability

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We consider the two-fluid resistive tearing mode for an inviscid highly conducting (a large Lundquist number S) plasma in a sheared force-free magnetic field. It is shown that under the “constant-ψ” approximation there are four possible instability regimes, each of which corresponds to the specific domain in the parameter space (β,di). Here, β is a standard plasma thermal pressure parameter, while di≡c∕(ωpil) is the normalized ion inertial skin depth, with l being the shear length of the magnetic field. A qualitative analysis emphasizing when and why the transitions from one regime to another occur is also provided.