Rayleigh-Taylor instability in an adiabatic-radiative rare plasma

Abstract

Abstract Considering the particle nature of photons, the impact of electromagnetic radiation pressure is examined on the Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) in a non-uniform rare magnetoplasma. For low-density and high-temperature rare plasma, the RTI with radiation pressure is revisited in the adiabatic limit. The growth rate conditions and propagating modes are derived using the framework of a developed fluid model. For specific values of ion temperature, the cut-off values of propagation of the fringing instability is found to be temperature dependent. A numerical comparison of the present results with previous work Maryam N, Rozina C and Ali S (2021, IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science 49 1072–1078) is displayed in table 1. It is found that the radiative acoustic speed is increased due to electromagnetic radiation pressure in rare plasmas as compared to radiative acoustic speed in dense plasmas. However, the growth rate of RTI increases comparatively as function of radiation pressure in rare plasmas. The present findings reveals that the consequences of RTI are remarkably concerned with the choice of electromagnetic radiation pressure either in dense (astrophysical) or rare (laboratory) plasmas. These findings are relevant to the observations of long-lived irregularities for explaining the gravitational instability in laboratory plasmas, e.g. in fusion devices like tokamaks.