  Aims. To determine the effect of the Hall term in the generalised Ohm's law
on the damping and phase mixing of Alfven waves in the ion cyclotron range of
frequencies in uniform and non-uniform equilibrium plasmas. Methods. Wave
damping in a uniform plasma is treated analytically, whilst a Lagrangian remap
code (Lare2d) is used to study Hall effects on damping and phase mixing in the
presence of an equilibrium density gradient. Results. The magnetic energy
associated with an initially Gaussian field perturbation in a uniform resistive
plasma is shown to decay algebraically at a rate that is unaffected by the Hall
term to leading order in k^2di^2 where k is wavenumber and di is ion skin
depth. A similar algebraic decay law applies to whistler perturbations in the
limit k^2di^2>>1. In a non-uniform plasma it is found that the
spatially-integrated damping rate due to phase mixing is lower in Hall MHD than
it is in MHD, but the reduction in the damping rate, which can be attributed to
the effects of wave dispersion, tends to zero in both the weak and strong phase
mixing limits.
