Linear and nonlinear studies of velocity shear driven three dimensional electron-magnetohydrodynamics instability

The study of electron velocity shear driven instability in electron magnetohydrodynamics (EMHD) regime in three dimensions has been carried out. It is well known that the instability is non-local in the plane defined by the flow direction and that of the shear, which is the usual Kelvin-Helmholtz mode, often termed as the sausage mode in the context of EMHD. On the other hand, a local instability with perturbations in the plane defined by the shear and the magnetic field direction exists which is termed as kink mode. The interplay of these two modes for simple sheared flow case as well as that when an external magnetic field exists has been studied extensively in the present manuscript in both linear and nonlinear regimes. Finally, these instability processes have been investigated for the exact 2D dipole solutions of EMHD equations [M. B. Isichenko and A. N. Marnachev, Soy. Phys. JETP 66, 702 (1987)] for which the electron flow velocity is sheared. It has been shown that dipoles are very robust and stable against the sausage mode as the unstable wavelengths are typically longer than the dipole size. However, we observe that they do get destabilized by the local kink mode. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4731728]