Inertial waves near corotation in 3D hydrodynamical disks
Abstract
This paper concerns the interaction between non-axisymmetric inertial waves and their corotation resonances in a hydrodynamical disk. Inertial waves are of interest because they can localise in resonant cavities circumscribed by Lindblad radii, and as a consequence exhibit discrete oscillation frequencies that may be observed. It is often hypothesised that these trapped eigenmodes are affiliated with the poorly understood QPO phenomenon. We demonstrate that a large class of non-axisymmetric 3D inertial waves cannot manifest as trapped normal modes. This class includes any inertial wave whose resonant cavity contains a corotation singularity. Instead, these `singular' modes constitute a continuous spectrum and, as an ensemble, are convected with the flow, giving rise to shearing waves. Lastly, we present a simple demonstration of how the corotation singularity stabilizes three-dimensional perturbations in a slender torus.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0907.0641,
title = {Inertial waves near corotation in 3D hydrodynamical disks},
author = {Henrik Latter and Steven Balbus},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0907.0641},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
17 pages, 5 figures. MNRAS accepted. V2 - Section 5.2 moved to appendix and errors removed