External confinement and surface modes in magnetized force-free jets

In the paradigm of magnetic launching of astrophysical jets, instabilities in the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow are a good candidate to convert the Poynting flux into the kinetic energy of the plasma. If the magnetized plasma fills the almost entire space, the jet is unstable to helical perturbations of its body. However, the growth rate of these modes is suppressed when the poloidal component of the magnetic field has a vanishing gradient, which may be the actual case for a realistic configuration. Here we show that, if the magnetized plasma is confined into a limited region by the pressure of some external medium, the velocity shear at the contact surface excites unstable modes which can affect a significant fraction of the jet's body. We find that when the Lorentz factor of the jet is Γ ~ 10 (Γ ~ 100), these perturbations typically develop after propagating along the jet for tens (hundreds) of jet's radii. Surface modes may therefore play an important role in converting the energy of the jet from the Poynting flux to the kinetic energy of the plasma, particularly in active galactic nuclei. The scaling of the dispersion relation with (i) the angular velocity of the field lines and (ii) the sound speed in the confining gas is discussed.