Effects of rotation on Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities of an accelerating, compressible, perfectly conducting plane layer (Q1068628)

The stability of a plane-stratified slab of perfectly conducting, rotating, compressible, inviscid plasma accelerated by a magnetic field is considered. Exact solutions for the growth rates of the unstable modes are determined for a \(\gamma\)-law gas when the undisturbed equilibrium is an isothermal atmosphere of semi-infinite extent with no frozen-in field. It is shown that the rotation has no effect on the region of unstable modes which has wavelengths long compared with the atmospheric scale height. On the other side, the growth rates in the presence of rotation are less than those in the absence of rotation for unstable modes.