Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in a strongly coupled dusty plasma medium

The Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability in the context of strongly coupled dusty plasma medium has been investigated. In particular, the role of transverse shear and the compressional acoustic modes in both the linear and nonlinear regimes of the KH instability has been studied. It is observed that in addition to the conventional nonlocal KH instability, there exists a local instability in the strong coupling case. The interplay of the KH mode with this local instability shows up in the simulations as an interesting phenomenon of recurrence in the nonlinear regime. Thus, a cyclic KH instability process is observed to occur. These cyclic events are associated with bursts of activity in terms of transverse and compressional wave generation in the medium. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4737148]