UW-CPTC 15-8 Analytical and Numerical Treatment of Resistive Drift Instability in a Plasma Slab

An analytic approach combining the effect of equilibrium diamagnetic flows and the finite ion-sound gyroradius associated with electron-ion decoupling and kinetic Alfvén wave effects is derived to study resistive drift instabilities in a plasma slab. Linear numerical computations using the NIMROD code are performed with cold ions and hot electrons in a plasma slab with a doubly periodic box bounded by two perfectly conducting walls. A linearly unstable resistive drift mode is observed in computations with a growth rate that is consistent with the analytic dispersion relation derived here. The resistive drift mode is expected to be suppressed by magnetic shear in unbounded domains, but the mode is observed in numerical computations with and without magnetic shear. In the slab model, the finite slab thickness and the perfectly conducting boundary conditions are likely to account for the lack of suppression.