Resistive instability in a Hall plasma discharge under ionization effect

A systematic study is presented for low frequency resistive instability in a Hall plasma discharge under the effect of collisions, ionization, and finite temperature of ions and electrons by considering finite axial wave number. For this, a two dimensional dispersion equation is derived and solved numerically. Analytical calculations are also performed for obtaining the expression of growth rate and to discuss the limiting cases of equal axial (k(x)) and azimuthal (k(y)) wave numbers. The instability with higher growth rate is realized in the presence of ionization; the same is the case for equal wave numbers (k(x) = k(y)). However, the instability is suppressed when the ions and electrons carry higher temperatures, and weak effect of the electron temperature is observed for the case k(x) = k(y). (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.