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| Paper: |
Numerical Simulations of the Wardle Instability |
| Volume: |
406, Numerical Modeling of Space Plasma Flows: ASTRONUM - 2008 |
| Page: |
80 |
| Authors: |
Falle, S.A.E.G.; Hartquist, T.W.; van Loo, S. |
| Abstract: |
In dense interstellar clouds, the ionisation fraction is so low that the material may be considered to be made up of two fluids: a perfectly conducting fluid consisting of the ions and electrons and a neutral fluid consisting of atomic hydrogen. These interact via collisions, but the imperfect coupling leads to a finite resistivity (ambi-polar diffusion). Under these conditions, there exist shock structures, called C-shocks, in which the dissipation is due to resistivity rather than viscosity (Draine 1980). Wardle (1990, 1991a,b) showed that C-shocks with Alfven Mach numbers greater than ≃ 5 are subject to a transverse corrugation instability and nonlinear calculations have shown that this leads to the formation of dense fingers of neutral gas (Toth 1995a,b; Stone 1997; Neufeld & Stone 1997; MacLow & Smith 1997). However, the instability relies on a separation between the conducting fluid and the neutral fluid, which does not occur if timescale for ionisation equilibrium is short compared to the flow time through the shock structure. The ionisation fraction is then simply a function of neutral density and our simulations show that this does indeed suppress the instability. Since the timescale for ionisation equilibrium is always short compared to the flow time in dense clouds, this means that the instability does not occur unless charged grains play a significant role. Instability is possible in this case because a fluid composed of charged grains does undergo separation from the neutrals and the grain mass fraction influences the ionisation fraction. We use the multi-fluid code described in Falle (2003), which includes the grain fluid, to show that the instability can occur in such cases. |
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