Laboratory Excitation of the Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability in an Ionospheric-Like Plasma

In the work, laboratory experiments were designed to simulate the collisional plasma environment of the ionosphere. Neutral gas was injected to increase the ion-neutral collisions, and the ambient plasma subsequently transforms from the magnetospheric-like collisionless plasma to the ionospheric-like collisional one. In the collisionless plasma, the classical electrostatic Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI) was generated using an interpenetrating plasma method. However, the collisionless KHI was dissipated in the collisional plasma and subsequently a new wave mode was excited. The mode was identified as the collisional KHI by comparing the experimental results with the theoretical wave dispersion relation. The result indicates that the KHI can be excited in the ionospheric-like collisional plasma, which could be applied to understand the generation mechanism of the ionospheric irregularities by the bottomside sheared flow.