Hall-magnetohydrodynamic surface waves in solar wind flow-structures

Abstract

This paper investigates the parallel propagation of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) surface waves travelling along an ideal steady plasma slab surrounded by a steady plasma environment in the framework of Hall magnetohydrodynamics. The magnitudes of the ambient magnetic field, plasma density and flow velocity inside and outside the slab are different. Two possible directions of the relative flow velocity (in a frame of reference co-moving with the ambient flow) have been studied. In contrast to the conventional MHD surface waves which are usually assumed to be pure surface or pseudo-surface waves, the Hall-MHD approach makes it necessary to treat the normal MHD slab's modes as generalized surface waves. The latter have to be considered as a superposition of two partial waves, one of which is a pure/pseudo-surface-wave whereas the other constitutive wave is a leaky one. From the two kinds of surface-wave modes that can propagate, notably sausage and kink ones, the dispersion behaviour of the kink mode turns out to be more complicated than that of the sausage mode. In general, the flow increases the waves' phase velocities comparing with their magnitudes in a static Hall-MHD plasma slab. The applicability of the results to real solar wind flow-structures is briefly discussed.