Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2008
By calculating the dielectric permittivity of a magnetoactive plasma discharge in the presence of an external electric field, low-frequency instabilities resulting from the dependency of the electron-neutral collision frequency, electron-ion recombination coefficient and ionization frequency on the electron temperature are investigated. Furthermore, it is shown that some of these instabilities depend on the sign change of the derivative of the kinetic coefficients with respect to the electron temperature. Finally, it is shown how frequency spectra and the development of instabilities are changed by increasing the strength of the external magnetic field.