Long-wave instability of periodic shear flows with constant magnetic field for the 2D resistive MHD equations

Abstract

We investigate the long-wave linear stability and instability of the two-dimensional viscous, resistive Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations, in vorticity-current formulation, on the periodic domain ${\mathbb T}_α\times {\mathbb T} = \Big( {\mathbb R}/(\frac{2 π}α {\mathbb Z}) \times {\mathbb R}/(2 π{\mathbb Z}) \Big)$, around a periodic shear flow $(U(y),0)$ coupled with a constant background magnetic field ${\bf b}=({\rm b}_1,{\rm b}_2)$. It is a non-trivial extension of a recent paper for the Navier-Stokes equations by Colombo, Dolce, Montalto & Ventura to the MHD setting in the spirit of the classical works of Kolmogorov, Meshalkin, Sinai and Yudovich. We establish explicit conditions on the shear flow profile $U(y)$ involving the viscosity $ν$, the resistivity $η$ and the components of the background magnetic field ${\bf b}$ to obtain linear long-wave stability and instability in the regime $α\ll 1$. The proof combines a non-perturbative normal form transformation decoupling the zero Fourier mode from the non-zero modes with sharp asymptotic expansions of the eigenvalues bifurcating from the zero unperturbed eigenvalue with respect to the parameter $α$. As a dynamical consequence, we obtain a splitting of the phase space into unstable and stable subspaces, on which solutions grow or decay exponentially in Sobolev norm.