Eur. Phys. J. D 60, 325-330 (2010)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2010-00213-6

Propagation of magnetoacoustic surface waves along static plasma slab surrounded by moving plasma and neutral gas

¹ Department of Physics, APA College (W), Palani 624615, Tamil Nadu, India
² Department of Physics, GRI, Gandhigram 624302, Tamil Nadu, India
³ Department of Computer Science and Application, GRI, Gandhigram 624302, Tamil Nadu, India

Corresponding author: ^a rvallikumar@yahoo.com

Received: 13 February 2010
Revised: 17 April 2010
Published online: 30 August 2010

Abstract

The existence and propagation of fast and slow magnetoacoustic surface waves (MASW) is investigated in our work by taking a theoretical model of a static plasma slab as the middle layer with a moving plasma region at the top and neutral gas medium as the bottom layer. Applying linear MHD, the dispersion relation is obtained and the propagation of magnetoacoustic surface waves, in the compressional limit for steady flow and for different values of dimensionless wave numbers, is analyzed. Steady flow of plasma along a structured atmosphere may cause enhancement of existing surface modes, disappearance of some modes and generation of new surface wave modes. The possible regions for the propagation of fast and slow surface and body waves for different mass density ratios and magnetic field ratios and with a small flow velocity are studied. Our discussion may help in analyzing more complicated cases.