Related papers: Buoyancy Instabilities in Weakly Magnetized Low Co…
Recent Chandra observations of clusters of galaxies revealed the existence of a sharp ridge in the X-ray surface brightness where the temperature drops across the front. This front is called the cold front. We present the results of…
We discuss, using simple analytical models and MHD simulations, the origin and parameters of turbulence and magnetic fields in galaxy clusters. Three physically distinct regimes can be identified in the evolution of cluster turbulence and…
Relativistic radiation mediated shocks (RRMS) likely form in prodigious cosmic explosions. The structure and emission of such shocks is regulated by copious production of electron-positron pairs inside the shock transition layer. It has…
Thermal instability is one of the most important processes in the formation of clumpy substructure in magnetic molecular clouds. On the other hand, ambipolar diffusion, or ion-neutral friction, has long been thought to be an important…
We consider the generation and evolution of magnetic field in a primordial plasma at temperature T < 1 MeV in presence of asymmetric neutrino background i.e. the number densities of right- handed and left-handed neutrinos are not same.…
We consider a model of galaxy clusters in which the hot gas is in hydrostatic equilibrium and maintains energy balance between radiative cooling and heating by thermal conduction. We analyze the thermal stability of the gas using a…
Microscopic instability and macroscopic flow pattern resulting from colliding plasmas are studied analytically in support of laboratory experiments. The plasma flows are assumed to stream radially from two separate centers. In a…
The presence of a chiral asymmetry in a relativistic plasma opens a tachyonic instability toward the growth of a helical magnetic field. We study the transfer of energy from the chiral asymmetry into the magnetic field during the…
The cosmic rays non-resonant streaming instability is believed to be the source of substantial magnetic field amplification. In this work we investigate the effects of the ambient plasma temperature on the instability and derive analytical…
We show in experiments that a long, underdense, relativistic proton bunch propagating in plasma undergoes the oblique instability, that we observe as filamentation. We determine a threshold value for the ratio between the bunch transverse…
Determining the origin of turbulence in galaxy clusters, and quantifying its transport of heat, is an outstanding problem, with implications for our understanding of their thermodynamic history and structure. As the dilute plasma of the…
Plasma in the terrestrial magnetosheath is characterised by very weak particle-particle collisions, so kinetic microinstabilities are thought to be responsible for regulating the thermodynamics of the plasma. By exciting electromagnetic…
Rayleigh-Taylor and Buoyancy-driven instabilities are very common instabilities for an inhomogeneous medium. We examine here how these instabilities grow for incompressible viscoelastic fluids like a strongly coupled dusty plasma by using…
The collision of two expanding plasma clouds is investigated, emphasizing instabilities and electron energization in the plasma mixing layer. This work is directly relevant to laboratory experiments with explosively-created laser or z-pinch…
Hot jupiter atmospheres may be subject to a thermo-resistive instability where an increase in the electrical conductivity due to ohmic heating results in runaway of the atmospheric temperature. We introduce a simplified one-dimensional…
The Weibel instability driven by two symmetric counter-streaming relativistic electron plasmas, also referred to as current-filamentation instability, is studied in a constant and uniform external magnetic field aligned with the plasma…
The back-reaction of the perturbed thermal equilibrium in the solar corona on compressive perturbations, also known as the effect of wave-induced thermal misbalance, is known to result in thermal instabilities chiefly responsible for the…
A new quasi-neutral model describing the Weibel instability of a high-current relativistic beam propagating through a resistive plasma is developed. It treats beam electrons as kinetic particles, and ambient plasma as a non-relativistic…
All experiments, which have been proposed so far to model the magnetorotational instability (MRI) in the laboratory, involve a Couette flow of liquid metals in a rotating annulus. All liquid metals have small magnetic Prandtl numbers, Pm,…
High-resolution X-ray observations have revealed cavities and `cold fronts' with sharp edges in temperature, density, and metallicity within galaxy clusters. Their presence poses a puzzle since these features are not expected to be…