Drag-driven instability of a dust layer in a magnetized protoplanetary disc

Abstract

We study drag-driven instability in a protoplanetary disc consisting of a layer of single-sized dust particles which are coupled to the magnetized gas aerodynamically and the particle-to-gas feedback is included. We find a dispersion relation for axisymmetric linear disturbances and growth rate of the unstable modes are calculated numerically. While the secular gravitational instability in the absence of particle-togas feedback predicts the dust layer is unstable, magnetic fields significantly amplify the instability if the Toomre parameter for the gas component is fixed. We also show that even a weak magnetic field is able to amplify the instability more or less irrespective of the dust-gas coupling.