Plasma Waves and Rayleigh–Taylor Instability: Theory and Application

Abstract

The presence of plasma density gradient is one of the main sources of Rayleigh–Taylor instability (RTI). The Rayleigh–Taylor instability has application in meteorology to explain cloud formations and in astrophysics to explain finger formation. It has wide applications in the inertial confinement fusion to determine the yield of the reaction. The aim of the chapter is to discuss the current status of the research related to RTI. The current research related to RTI has been reviewed, and general dispersion relation has been derived under the thermal motion of electron. The perturbed densities of ions and electrons are determined using two fluid approach under the small amplitude of oscillations. The dispersion equation is derived with the help of Poisson’s equation and solved numerically to investigate the effect of various parameters on the growth rate and real frequency. It has been shown that the real frequency increases with plasma density gradient, electron temperature and the wavenumber, but magnetic field has opposite effect on it. On the other hand, the growth rate of instability increases with magnetic field and density gradient, but it decreases with electron temperature and wave number.