The stability of weakly ionized collisional dusty plasma in the presence of flow

The stability of weakly ionized and magnetized plasma in the presence of transverse (to the magnetic field) neutral wind is investigated in the present work. The collisional coupling of ambient background flow to the magnetized plasma gives rise to an electric field. In the presence of charged unmagnetized dust, electrostatic fluctuations in such plasma become unstable, with the growth rate dependent on the plasma thermal speed as well as on the dust charge and collision frequencies. This instability is similar to the Farley-Buneman instability. However, unlike Farley-Buneman, where the growth rate is directly dependent on the background flow, this dependence in the present case is only indirect. It is shown that this instability can grow over few seconds in the Earth's lower ionosphere and thus could play an important role in the structure formation.