A survey of the effects of magnetic fields, resistivity, viscosity and thermal conduction on the Rayleigh–Taylor instability

Abstract

The Rayleigh–Taylor instability (RTI) is ubiquitous in nature and has been investigated in great detail in a number of theoretical, numerical, and experimental studies relevant to laboratory and space plasmas. The RTI can significantly be altered by the presence of magnetic fields, resistivity, viscosity, and thermal conduction. This paper presents a brief survey and summarizes initial findings of the effect of a plasma RTI modified by these effects.

Keywords:

• Plasma modelling
• Rayleigh–Taylor instability
• high-energy-density plasma
• magneto-Rayleigh–Taylor
• visco-resistive magnetohydrodynamics

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge Advanced Research Computing at Virginia Tech. This work was funded by the Department of Energy under award number DE-SC0016515.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Dr. Yang Song is presently a R&D engineer at Ansys Inc. working on CFD software development in the Fluid Business Unit and he received his PhD in 2020 developing novel numerical algorithms as applied to fluid dynamics and plasma physics working under the supervision of Prof. Srinivasan.

Prof. Bhuvana Srinivasan is an Associate Professor in the Kevin T. Crofton Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at Virginia Tech performing research in computational plasma physics as applied to a range of nuclear fusion concepts, advanced spacecraft propulsion, and space science.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Department of Energy under award number DE-SC0016515.