Rayleigh–Taylor instabilities of an accelerating, compressible, perfectly conducting plane layer

Abstract

The stability of a plane stratified slab of perfectly conducting, compressible, inviscid plasma accelerated by a magnetic field is considered. Exact closed form solutions for the growth rates of the unstable modes are determined for a γ-law gas when the undisturbed equilibrium is an isothermal atmosphere of semi-infinite extent with no frozen-in field. It is shown that the fluid slab is always unstable at wavelengths long compared with the atmospheric scale height and that the corresponding growth rates agree with those calculated in the limit of incompressible flow.