Drift dissipative instability in a two temperature plasma

Abstract

The presence of a small amount of relatively cold electrons in an otherwise hot plasma reduces the ion sound speed in the medium and hence reduces the growth rate of the drift dissipative ion acoustic mode in an inhomogeneous weakly ionized plasma. This is expected to improve the confinement time in certain magnetic confinement schemes. The propagation of a small but finite amplitude mode in the presence of ion viscosity is also investigated by using the reductive perturbation method. It is shown that, when the damping due to ion viscosity is stronger than the growth due to collisions, there exists a stationary shock solution.