  This paper is concerned with the stability and large-time behavior of 3D
incompressible MHD equations with only vertical dissipation near a background
magnetic field. By making full use of the dissipation generated by the
background magnetic field, we first establish the global stability of the
solutions in $H^3$-norm. Then, the optimal decay rates of the solutions are
obtained, which are consistent with the 2D classical heat equation. Moreover,
some enhanced decay rates of $(u_1,b_1)$ are also achieved. In other words, the
decay estimates of the second or third component of velocity/magnetic field
coincide with those of 2D heat kernel, while the first component behaves like
the 3D heat kernel. This is mainly due to the divergence-free condition and the
anisotropic structure. The results obtained improve the previous ones due to
Lin-Wu-Zhu [24,25].
