Parametric Decay Instability of Alfven Waves in Low-Beta Astrophysical Plasmas

In low-beta environments that often exist in the corona of stars (including our Sun), corona of accretion disks and astrophysical jets, Parametric Decay Instability (PDI) of Alfven waves provides a possible avenue of directly converting magnetic energy to compressible waves (slow modes) which could heat the plasmas. While the PDI is being actively investigated in the non-relativistic plasmas, its behavior in relativistic MHD is less well known. We will present results on the growth and saturation of such an instability in different parameter regimes. Applications for several astrophysical systems will be discussed as well.