Drift modes of a quasi-two-dimensional current sheet

Abstract

Stability of a plasma configuration consisting of a thin one dimensional current sheet embedded into a two dimensional background current sheet is studied. Drift modes developing in plasma as unstable waves along the current direction are considered. Dispersion relations for kink and sausage perturbation modes are obtained depending on the ratio of parameters of thin and background current sheets. It is shown that the existence of the background sheet results in a decrease in the instability growth rates and a significant increase in the perturbation wavelengths. The role of drift modes in the excitation of oscillations observed in the current sheet of the Earth's magnetotail is discussed.