Nonlocal sausage-like instability of current channels in electron magnetohydrodynamics

The question of stability of electron current channels in a plasma to rapid ly growing modes on electron time scales is of considerable interest in a w ide range of physical problems, e.g., fast ignitor concept of laser fusion, plasma opening switches, Z pinches, etc. Earlier studies have demonstrated the instability of such current channels to kink modes. However, the stabi lity to sausage-like modes has not been investigated so far. In this paper such an investigation has been carried out and it is shown that the current channels are unstable to sausage-like modes with parallel scale lengths lo nger than the current channel width. These instabilities are closely relate d to the Kelvin-Helmholtz (K-H) instability of a sheared electron layer. (C ) 2001 American Institute of Physics.