Vertical shear instabilities in rotating stellar radiation zones: effects of the full Coriolis acceleration and thermal diffusion

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Auteurs principaux: Park, Junho, Mathis, Stéphane
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Park, Junho
Mathis, Stéphane
author_facet Park, Junho
Mathis, Stéphane
contents Rotation deeply impacts the structure and the evolution of stars. To build coherent 1D or multi-D stellar structure and evolution models, we must systematically evaluate the turbulent transport of momentum and matter induced by hydrodynamical instabilities of radial and latitudinal differential rotation in stably stratified thermally diffusive stellar radiation zones. In this work, we investigate vertical shear instabilities in these regions. The full Coriolis acceleration with the complete rotation vector at a general latitude is taken into account. We formulate the problem by considering a canonical shear flow with a hyperbolic-tangent profile. We perform linear stability analysis on this base flow using both numerical and asymptotic Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin-Jeffreys (WKBJ) methods. Two types of instabilities are identified and explored: inflectional instability, which occurs in the presence of an inflection point in shear flow, and inertial instability due to an imbalance between the centrifugal acceleration and pressure gradient. Both instabilities are promoted as thermal diffusion becomes stronger or stratification becomes weaker. Effects of the full Coriolis acceleration are found to be more complex according to parametric investigations in wide ranges of colatitudes and rotation-to-shear and rotation-to-stratification ratios. Also, new prescriptions for the vertical eddy viscosity are derived to model the turbulent transport triggered by each instability. We foresee that the inflectional instability will be responsible for turbulent transport in the equatorial region of strongly-stratified radiative zones in slowly rotating stars while the inertial instability triggers turbulence in the polar regions of weakly-stratified radiative zones in fast-rotating stars.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_05293
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Vertical shear instabilities in rotating stellar radiation zones: effects of the full Coriolis acceleration and thermal diffusion
Park, Junho
Mathis, Stéphane
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Fluid Dynamics
Rotation deeply impacts the structure and the evolution of stars. To build coherent 1D or multi-D stellar structure and evolution models, we must systematically evaluate the turbulent transport of momentum and matter induced by hydrodynamical instabilities of radial and latitudinal differential rotation in stably stratified thermally diffusive stellar radiation zones. In this work, we investigate vertical shear instabilities in these regions. The full Coriolis acceleration with the complete rotation vector at a general latitude is taken into account. We formulate the problem by considering a canonical shear flow with a hyperbolic-tangent profile. We perform linear stability analysis on this base flow using both numerical and asymptotic Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin-Jeffreys (WKBJ) methods. Two types of instabilities are identified and explored: inflectional instability, which occurs in the presence of an inflection point in shear flow, and inertial instability due to an imbalance between the centrifugal acceleration and pressure gradient. Both instabilities are promoted as thermal diffusion becomes stronger or stratification becomes weaker. Effects of the full Coriolis acceleration are found to be more complex according to parametric investigations in wide ranges of colatitudes and rotation-to-shear and rotation-to-stratification ratios. Also, new prescriptions for the vertical eddy viscosity are derived to model the turbulent transport triggered by each instability. We foresee that the inflectional instability will be responsible for turbulent transport in the equatorial region of strongly-stratified radiative zones in slowly rotating stars while the inertial instability triggers turbulence in the polar regions of weakly-stratified radiative zones in fast-rotating stars.
title Vertical shear instabilities in rotating stellar radiation zones: effects of the full Coriolis acceleration and thermal diffusion
topic Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Fluid Dynamics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.05293