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Updated: Jul 13, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Hydromagnetic instability in plane Couette flow
1INAF, Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania, Via S.Sofia 78, 95123 Catania, Italy.
Abstract:
We study the stability of a compressible magnetic plane Couette flow and show that compressibility profoundly alters the stability properties if the magnetic field has a component perpendicular to the direction of flow. The necessary condition of an instability can be satisfied in a wide variety of flows in laboratory and astrophysical conditions. The instability can operate even in a very strong magnetic field which entirely suppresses other magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) instabilities. The growth time of this instability can be rather short and reach approximately 10 shear time scales.
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