Note on the role of friction-induced momentum conservation in the collisional drift wave instability

Abstract

The collisional drift wave instability is reexamined taking into account the ion response in the direction parallel to the magnetic field lines, which appears due to friction with electrons and which can not be omitted in view of the momentum conservation. A modified instability threshold is obtained. In plasmas with dominant electron collisions with neutrals, the instability threshold is shifted towards higher frequencies, compared to the case of dominant electron collisions with ions. The difference between the two cases vanishes when the ion sound response is negligible, i.e., when the instability threshold disappears, and both ions and neutrals react to the electron friction in the same manner.