Related papers: Enhanced mixing in magnetized fingering convection…
Fingering (thermohaline) convection has been invoked for several years as a possible extra-mixing which could occur in Red Giant stars due to the modification of the chemical composition induced by nuclear reactions in the hydrogen burning…
Fingering convection (also known as thermohaline convection) is a process that drives the vertical transport of chemical elements in regions of stellar radiative zones where the mean molecular weight increases with radius. Recently,…
Much progress has recently been made in understanding and quantifying vertical mixing induced by double-diffusive instabilities such as fingering convection (usually called thermohaline convection) and oscillatory double-diffusive…
Stably stratified layers are thought to develop at the top of the liquid metallic cores of many terrestrial planets. We consider the case where the thermal gradient is stable but the compositional gradient is unstable, a situation…
Fingering convection is a turbulent mixing process that can occur in stellar radiative regions whenever the mean molecular weight increases with radius. In some cases, it can have a significant observable impact on stellar structure and…
Fingering convection (or thermohaline convection) is a weak yet important kind of mixing that occurs in stably-stratified stellar radiation zones in the presence of an inverse mean-molecular-weight gradient. Brown et al. (2013) recently…
We have identified an important source of mixing in stellar radiation zones, that would arise whenever two conditions are satisfied: (1) the presence of an inverse vertical compositional gradient, and (2) the presence of…
A region of a star that is stable to convection according to the Ledoux criterion may nevertheless undergo additional mixing if the mean molecular weight increases with radius. This process is called fingering (thermohaline) convection and…
First results of our 3D numerical simulations of thermohaline convection driven by 3He burning in a low-mass RGB star at the bump luminosity are presented. They confirm our previous conclusion that this convection has a mixing rate which is…
Stably-stratified layers may be present at the top of the electrically-conducting fluid layers of many planets either because the temperature gradient is locally subadiabatic or because a stable composition gradient is maintained by the…
Double-diffusive instabilities are often invoked to explain enhanced transport in stably-stratified fluids. The most-studied natural manifestation of this process, fingering convection, commonly occurs in the ocean's thermocline and…
Iron-rich layers are known to form in the stellar subsurface through a combination of gravitational settling and radiative levitation. Their presence, nature and detailed structure can affect the excitation process of various stellar…
We analyze experimental data on double diffusive convection in an electrochemical cell in the finger regime. All fingers in the experiments are bounded on at least one end by a solid wall. The properties of these fingers are compared with…
Low-mass stars are known to experience extra-mixing in their radiative zones on the red-giant branch (RGB) above the bump luminosity. To determine if the salt-fingering transport of chemical composition driven by 3He burning is efficient…
The advection of thermonuclear ashes by magnetized domains emerging from near the H-shell was suggested to explain AGB star abundances. Here we verify this idea quantitatively through exact MHD models. Starting with a simple 2D geometry and…
Magnetic fields and magnetic materials have promising microfluidic applications. For example, magnetic micro-convection can enhance mixing considerably. However, previous studies have not explained increased effective diffusion during this…
When a planet falls onto the surface of its host star, the added high-metallicity material does not remain in the surface layers, as often assumed, but is diluted into the interior through fingering (thermohaline) convection. Until now,…
It is believed that some stars have two or more convection zones in close proximity near to the stellar photosphere. These zones are separated by convectively stable regions that are relatively narrow. Due to the close proximity of these…
We study the effects of rotation on the growth and saturation of the double-diffusive fingering (thermohaline) instability at low Prandtl number. Using direct numerical simulations, we estimate the compositional transport rates as a…
We present the first three-dimensional simulations of fingering convection performed in a parameter regime close to the one relevant for astrophysics, and reveal the existence of simple asymptotic scaling laws for turbulent heat and…