Magnetic diffusion driven shear instability of solar flux tubes

TL;DR

This paper investigates a magnetic diffusion shear instability in solar flux tubes caused by non-ideal MHD effects, showing it can grow rapidly and influence turbulence in the solar atmosphere.

Contribution

It introduces a new understanding of how magnetic diffusion and shear flows interact to destabilize solar magnetic elements, highlighting the role of ambipolar, Hall, and Pedersen diffusion.

Findings

Instability growth time is approximately one minute under typical shear conditions.

Both ambipolar and Hall diffusion can destabilize magnetic flux tubes with oblique fields.

The instability may significantly contribute to low-frequency turbulence in the solar photosphere and chromosphere.

Abstract

Macroscopic gas motions are widespread throughout the solar atmosphere and shearing motions couple to the non--ideal effects, destabilising low frequency fluctuations in the medium. The origin of this non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic instability lies in the collisional coupling of the neutral particles to the magnetized plasma in the presence of a sheared background flow. Unsurprisingly, the maximum growth rate and most unstable wavenumber depend on the flow gradient and ambient diffusivities. The orientation of the magnetic field, velocity shears and perturbation wave vector play a crucial role in assisting the instability. When the magnetic field and wave vector are both vertical, ambipolar and Ohm diffusion can be combined as Pedersen diffusion and cause only damping; in this case only Hall drift in tandem with shear flow drives the instability. However, for non-vertical fields and oblique wave vectors, both ambipolar diffusion and Hall drift are destabilizing. We investigate the stability of magnetic elements in the network and internetwork regions. The shear scale is not yet observationally determined, but assuming a typical shear flow gradient $\sim 0.1 \,\mbox{s}^{-1}$ we show that the magnetic diffusion shear instability grows on a time scale of one minute. Thus, it is plausible that network--internetwork magnetic elements are subject to this fast growing, diffusive shear instability, which could play an important role in driving low frequency turbulence in the plasma in the solar photosphere and chromosphere.