Observation of the Taylor instability in a dusty plasma

Observations of the Taylor instability in a laboratory dusty plasma are presented. The dust cloud, formed in a dc argon glow-discharge plasma, is stratified into regions of high and low dust densities. The instability was triggered by a spontaneous intrusion of the low density dust fluid into the high density dust fluid at the interface. The instability in the dust fluid was phenomenologically similar to the hydrodynamic Taylor instability that occurs when a light fluid is accelerated into a heavy fluid.