Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2010
This paper presents a simple description of three-wave decay interactions involving a pump dispersive Alfvén wave (DAW), decay DAW and decay slow wave (SW) in a uniform magnetized plasma. When the ponderomotive nonlinearities are incorporated in DAW dynamics, the model equations governing the nonlinear excitation of the SWs by DAW in the low-β plasmas (β ≪ me/mi as applicable to solar corona) are given. The expressions for the coupling coefficients of the three-wave interaction have been derived. The growth rate of the instability is also calculated and found that the value of the decay growth time comes out to be of the order of milliseconds at the pump DAW amplitude B0y/B0 = 10−3.