English

Tidally driven mean flows in slowly and uniformly rotating massive main sequence stars

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2017-04-19 v1

Abstract

We calculate tidally driven mean flows in a slowly and uniformly rotating massive main sequence star in a binary system. We treat the tidal potential due to the companion as a small perturbation to the primary star. We compute tidal responses of the primary as forced linear oscillations, as a function of the tidal forcing frequency ωtide=2(ΩorbΩ)\omega_{\rm tide}=2(\Omega_{\rm orb}-\Omega), where Ωorb\Omega_{\rm orb} is the mean orbital angular velocity and Ω\Omega is the angular velocity of rotation of the primary star. The amplitude of the tidal responses is proportional to the parameter f0(M2/M)(aorb/R)3f_0\propto (M_2/M)(a_{\rm orb}/R)^{-3}, where MM and M2M_2 are the masses of the primary and companion stars, RR is the radius of the primary and aorba_{\rm orb} is the mean orbital separation between the stars. For a given f0f_0, the amplitudes depend on ωtide\omega_{\rm tide} and become large when ωtide\omega_{\rm tide} is in resonance with natural frequencies of the star. Using the tidal responses, we calculate axisymmetric mean flows, assuming that the mean flows are non-oscillatory flows driven via non-linear effects of linear tidal responses. We find that the ϕ\phi-component of the mean flow velocity dominates. We also find that the amplitudes of the mean flows are large only in the surface layers where non-adiabatic effects are significant and that the amplitudes are confined to the equatorial regions of the star. Depending on M2/MM_2/M and aorb/Ra_{\rm orb}/R, the amplitudes of mean flows at the surface become significant.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1703.03531,
  title  = {Tidally driven mean flows in slowly and uniformly rotating massive main sequence stars},
  author = {Umin Lee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.03531},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

18 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society