Instability of ion–ion hybrid waves in current-carrying collisional plasmas with two ion species

Abstract

The stability of electrostatic waves propagating at large angles with respect to the background magnetic field is studied in collisional, fully ionized plasmas with two types of ion species and carrying a field-aligned current. By considering plasmas with ma/mb ≪ Nb/Na ≪ mb/ma where m and N denote mass and density respectively and subscripts a and b refer to the two ion species, a complicated dispersion relation is reduced to two simple equations for the determination of the real and imaginary parts of the frequency. It is found that, under appropriate conditions, an instability occurs at frequencies slightly above but very close to the ion–ion hybrid frequency. The growth rate scales directly as the electron–ion collisional frequency.