Abstract
Effects of the Hall term and the gyro-viscosity on the Rayleigh-Taylor instability in a 2D rectangular slab are studied numerically. Nonlinear magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) simulations with these effects reveal that the combination of the Hall term and the gyro-viscosity causes the lower growth rates and the lower saturation level of unstable modes relative those in the single-fluid MHD case, while neither the gyro-viscosity nor the Hall term shows a strong stabilization effect only by itself. It is also shown that the mixing width of the density field can grow as large as that in the single-fluid MHD case, even though the saturation level of the kinetic energy is lowered and the detailed density profile becomes sharper. These numerical results suggest that the extension of the MHD equations can bring about a growth of unstable modes in a lower level, although it does not necessarily mean a weaker impact of the instability to the equilibrium.
