Shear driven instabilities in dusty plasmas

Most of the space plasma is dusty. It contains charged grains and, the coupling of the grains to the magnetic field determines the nature of wave propagation in the medium. The plasma-dust collision can causes not only damping of the high frequency waves but also assist the excitation and propagation of low frequency fluctuations in the medium. Therefore, it should be anticipated that the plasma–dust collision, in the presence of shear flows may open new channels through which free shear energy (if it is available in the plasma) can flow to waves. The large scale structures in space such as clumps and filaments often provide motivation to investigate the behaviour of a dusty medium. Since the propagation of low frequency fluctuations in a collisional medium can become unstable in the presence of shear flow, it is likely that such waves, when unstable, can provide the right conditions for formation of clumps. We carry out comparative study of known hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic shear driven instabilities in dusty plasma by comparing their maximum growth rate and the parameter window in which they operate.