The Stability of Optically Thin Reacting Plasmas: Effects of the Bulk Viscosity

The thermochemical stability of reacting plasmas is analyzed by taking into account the change in the thermodynamical equilibrium values during the fluctuation. This shift in the equilibrium produces two main effects: a change in the four instability criteria for reacting gases resulting when the above effect is neglected and adds a fifth instability criterion due to the fact that the corresponding secular equation becomes a fifth-order polynomial. The above results are applied to several plasma models, in particular, to a photoionized hydrogen plasma for which the bulk viscosity can be more important than the dynamic viscosity and the thermometric conductivity. Therefore, the bulk viscosity may quench thermochemical instabilities were the thermal conduction is unable of stabilizing. This occurs for low values of the photoionizing energy E. The implications of the above results in explaining the formation of clump structures in different regions of the interstellar medium are outlined.