1210.8029 (Ebru Devlen)

The Anisotropic Transport Effects On The Dilute Plasmas    [PDF]

Ebru Devlen

We examine the linear stability analysis of a hot, dilute and differentially rotating plasma by considering anisotropic transport effects. In the dilute plasmas, the ion Larmor radius is small compared with its collisional mean free path. In this case, the transport of heat and momentum along the magnetic field lines become important. This paper presents a novel linear instability that may more powerful and greater than ideal magnetothermal instability (MTI) and ideal magnetorotational instability (MRI) in the dilute astrophysical plasmas. This type of plasma is believed to be found in the intracluster medium of galaxy clusters and radiatively ineffective accretion flows around black holes. We derive the dispersion relation of this instability and obtain the instability condition. There is at least one unstable mode that is independent of the temperature gradient direction for a helical magnetic field geometry. This novel instability is driven by the gyroviscosity coupled with differential rotation. Therefore we call it as gyroviscous modified magnetorotational instability (GvMRI). We examine how the instability depends on signs of the temperature gradient and the gyroviscosity, and also on the magnitude of the thermal frequency and on the values of the pitch angle. We provide a detailed physical interpretation of obtained results. The GvMRI is applicable not only to the accretion flows and intracluster medium but also to the transition region between cool dense gas and the hot low-density plasma in stellar coronae, accretion disks, and the multiphase interstellar medium because of being independent of the temperature gradient direction.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.8029