Convective instability of a rotating layer of ferromagnetic fluid

The instability of a hot horizontal layer of ferromagnetic fluid rotating about a vertical axis has been investigated when the Prandtl numberP < 1. Earlier it was shown that forP > 1 the overstability cannot occur. In this paper the convective and overstable marginal states have been investigated separately forP < 1 and it is found that though convective marginal state is possible for alla, the non-dimensional wave number, and N the Taylor number, the overstability is possible only ifN > (1 +P)π ⁴/(1 −P) and in case the condition is satisfied, overstability is possible for all those values ofa which satisfya ² < N(1 −P)π ²/(1 +P)] ^1/3 − π². IfR _c ^(con) andR _c ^(o.s) are the critical values of the convective and the overstable marginal states respectively, then it is also found thatR _c ^(con) <R _c ^(o.s) providedN is not sufficiently large.