Zonal and streamer structures in magnetic-curvature-driven Rayleigh–Taylor instability

A detailed numerical investigation of the nonlinear evolution of the magnetic curvature-driven Rayleigh–Taylor instability is carried out. The evolution is found to follow one of two distinct paths—that leading to a saturated zonal flow pattern or growing streamer structures. For a fixed value of the density gradient and the magnetic field gradient, the parametric regimes for the occurrence of these two states is delineated in the form of a phase diagram in the D−μ space, where D is the diffusion coefficient and μ is the viscosity parameter. The bifurcation behavior is explained on the basis of a reduced quasilinear model and the final saturated state of zonal flows is understood from a phenomenological zero-dimensional model.