Rayleigh Taylor like instability in presence of shear velocity in a strongly coupled quantum plasma

Abstract

The Rayleigh-Taylor like instability (RTI) is investigated in a strongly correlated quantum plasma (SCQP) under the influence of shear velocity. We implement the general hydrodynamic (GH) model with quantum corrections in order to study the system characteristics. The quantum correction comes to the effect via weakly coupled, fully degenerate, non-relativistic electrons; whereas the non-degenerate ions are taken to be strongly correlated. In order to investigate RTI in shorter wavelength regime we consider an exponential equilibrium density profile in presence of gravity. In the incompressible limit, it is observed that the shear velocity has both stabilizing and destabilizing effect on RTI depending upon the direction of the gradient of the shear velocity. In contrary, for the compressible case, shear velocity has a destabilizing effect on RTI irrespective of the direction of the gradient of the shear velocity. The observed results can be pretty handy in understanding the suppression of RTI in some dense white dwarfs or ultra cold stars where the constituents are weakly degenerate electrons and strongly correlated ions within quantum limits.