Hydrodynamic Instability of Radially Stratified Protoplanetary Disks

Details Hydrodynamic Instability of Radially Stratified Protoplanetary Disks Hydrodynamic Instability of Radially Stratified Protoplanetary Disks

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.1310s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #13.10; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.506

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We describe a new hydrodynamic instability of protoplanetary disks that have strong radial entropy gradients. The instability is triggered by small non-axisymmetric temperature perturbations. The combination of a background radial pressure gradient and the azimuthal temperature gradients perturbation produces both positive and negative vorticity perturbations. Keplerian shear flow causes the vorticity perturbations to wind up as they decrease their radial wavelength and increase their radial gradients. If the Reynolds number of the flow is sufficiently large (low numerical viscosity), the total radial vorticity profile becomes non-monotonic, leading to a secondary instability that produces long-lived anticyclonic vorticies. If the Reynolds number is too small (large numerical viscosity), the vorticity perturbations are viscously damped before the secondary instability can occur. We illustrate the instability with nonlinear hydrodynamic simulations of a two-dimensional anelastic disk model. The instability may be related to the baroclinic disk instability simulated by Klahr and Bodenheimer (Ap. J. 582: 869, 2003).

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