Frictional effects with neutrals and Rayleigh‐Taylor instability of a compressible Hall plasma

The effect of neutral gas friction is considered on the Rayleigh‐Taylor instability of a compressible plasma in the presence of Hall currents. The prevailing magnetic field is assumed to be uniform and horizontal. It is shown that the solution is characterized by a variational principle. Based on the variational principle the dispersion relation is derived for a composite plasma, confined between two horizontal planes at a finite distance, in which the density is stratified in the direction of gravity according to the exponential law. It is found that the effect of collisions with neutrals, Hall currents and compressibility of the medium have destabilizing influence as the wave number range which is stable in their absence, is rendered unstable by their presence.