Kelvin–Helmholtz instability driven by asymmetry effects in chaotic magnetic configurations

The Kelvin–Helmholtz instability has been shown [Grasso et al., Phys. Plasmas 27, 012302 (2020)] to develop in asymmetric magnetic configurations, where only a single helicity (SH) mode is present. Asymmetric configurations are commonly encountered in solar and astrophysical environments and in laboratory plasmas, which are usually characterized also by the presence of magnetic chaos. The problem of the influence of magnetic chaos on the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability in such a chaotic configuration is addressed in this paper. The main result is that the presence of magnetic chaos causes the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability to appear sooner compared to the SH case and, starting from a small portion of the separatrix, to quickly involve the entire separatrix.