The Effect of the Random Magnetic Field Component on the Parker Instability.pdfVIP

draft of February 1, 2008 The Effect of the Random Magnetic Field Component on the Parker Instability Jongsoo Kim 1 Korea Astronomy Observatory, 61-1, Hwaam-Dong, Yusong-Ku, Taejon 305-348, Korea 0 0 NCSA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 405 North Mathews Avenue, Urbana, 2 IL 61801: jskim@ncsa.uiuc.edu p e S and 9 1 Dongsu Ryu 1 Department of Astronomy Space Science, Chungnam National University, Daejeon v 705-764, Korea: ryu@canopus.chungnam.ac.kr 3 0 3 ABSTRACT 9 0 1 The Parker instability is considered to play important roles in the evolution of 0 / the interstellar medium. Most studies on the development of the instability so far h p have been based on an initial equilibrium system with a uniform magnetic field. - o However, the Galactic magnetic field possesses a random component in addition r t to the mean uniform component, with comparable strength of the two compo- s a nents. Parker and Jokipii have recently suggested that the random component : v can suppress the growth of small wavelength perturbations. Here, we extend i X their analysis by including gas pressure which was ignored in their work, and r a study the stabilizing effect of the random component in the interstellar gas with finite pressure. Following Parker and Jokipii, the magnetic field is modeled as a mean azimuthal component, B (z), plus a r