Electric field driven flute instabilities in a nonuniform collisional plasma

The stability of a magnetically confined nonuniform plasma column with a radial electric field is examined with a linear single-fluid theory including the effects of rotation, ion-neutral collisions and finite Larmor radius stabilization. The transition from the Rayleigh-Taylor instability in the collisionless limit to the Simon neutral-drag instability in the collision-dominated limit, and the effect of collisions on finite Larmor radius stabilization, is studied in detail. A numerical example is given and the application of the theory to experiments is discussed.