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Related papers: Mixing through shear instabilities

200 papers

We present models of turbulent mixing at the boundaries between hot (T~10^{6-7} K) and warm material (T~10^4 K) in the interstellar medium, using a three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamical code, with radiative cooling. The source of…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-11 A. Esquivel , R. A. Benjamin , A. Lazarian , J. Cho , S. N. Leitner

At the interface between two fluid layers in relative motion, infinitesimal fluctuations can be exponentially amplified, inducing vorticity and the breakdown of the laminar flow. This process, known as the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, is…

Numerical simulations of stratified shear flow instabilities are performed in two dimensions in the Boussinesq limit. The density variation length scale is chosen to be four times smaller than the velocity variation length scale so that…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2015-05-13 Alexandros Alexakis

Cool, dense material is frequently observed to permeate the hot, tenuous solar corona in the form of prominences, spicules and coronal rain. Both the cool material and surrounding corona exist at temperatures that are effectively thermally…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2026-01-30 B. Snow , A. Hillier

Simulations and observations of the low-latitude magnetosphere-magnetosheath boundary layer indicate that the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI) drives vortex structures that enhance plasma mixing and magnetic reconnection, influencing…

Plasma Physics · Physics 2026-05-06 Silvia Ferro , Fabio Bacchini , Giuseppe Arrò , Francesco Pucci , Pierre Henri

This article revisits the instability of sharp shear interfaces, also called vortex sheets, in incompressible fluid flows. We study the Birkhoff-Rott equation, which describes the motion of vortex sheets according to the incompressible…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2023-09-06 Ryan Murray , Galen Wilcox

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…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2019-07-10 P. Garaud , A. Kumar , J. Sridhar

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…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-22 Michael Medrano , Pascale Garaud , Stephan Stellmach

We have derived a new expression for the thermohaline mixing coefficient in stars, including the effects of radiative levitation and external turbulence, by solving Boussinesq equations in a quasi-incompressible fluid with a linear…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-05 Sylvie Vauclair , Sylvie Théado

A plane turbulent mixing in a shear flow of an ideal homogeneous fluid confined between two relatively close rigid walls is considered. The character of the flow is determined by interaction of vortices arising at the nonlinear stage of the…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2020-07-15 Alexander Chesnokov , Valery Liapidevskii

We present the results of simulations of the development of the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability in a cooled, slab symmetric system. The parameters were chosen to approximate the physical conditions typically found in jets from young…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 T. P. Downes , T. P. Ray

It has been recently argued through numerical work that rotating stars with a high degree of differential rotation are dynamically unstable against bar-mode deformation, even for values of the ratio of rotational kinetic energy to…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-06-23 Pablo Cerdá-Durán , Vicent Quilis , José A. Font

We investigate the linear instability of two-layer stratified shear flows in a sloping two-dimensional channel, subject to non-zero longitudinal gravitational forces. We reveal three previously unknown instabilities, distinct from the…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2023-09-20 Lu Zhu , Amir Atoufi , Adrien Lefauve , Rich R. Kerswell , P. F. Linden

The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability serves as a simple, well-defined setup for assessing the accuracy of different numerical methods for solving the equations of hydrodynamics. We use it to extend our previous analysis of the convergence and…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2020-12-09 Martin Obergaulinger , Miguel-Ángel Aloy

Many observational results seem to indicate more efficient mixing processes in intermediate mass stars (5-20 M$_{\odot}$) than the expected by the standard models. These processes are usually thought to be caused by stellar rotation. Our…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 R. Smiljanic , B. Barbuy , J. R. De Medeiros , A. Maeder

This letter investigates the effect of shear on Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI). Even simple uniform shear strongly influences the instability; longer waves are completely stabilized when density stratification is large (higher Atwood…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2017-10-24 Raunak Raj , Anirban Guha

Stratified spin-up experiments in enclosed cylinders have reported the presence of small pockets of well-mixed fluids but quantitative measurements of the mixedness of the fluid has been lacking. Previous numerical simulations have not…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2015-06-18 Meline Baghdasarian , Arturo Pacheco-Vega , J. Rafael Pacheco , Roberto Verzicco

We investigate the hydrodynamics of the interaction of two supersonic winds in binary systems. The collision of the winds creates two shocks separated by a contact discontinuity. The overall structure depends on the momentum flux ratio eta…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-30 Astrid Lamberts , Sebastien Fromang , Guillaume Dubus

The dynamical shear instability is an important mixing process in the advanced stages of the evolution of massive stars. We calculated different models of 15 Mo with an initial rotational velocity, v(rot,ini)= 300 km/s to investigate its…

Astrophysics · Physics 2016-08-30 Raphael Hirschi , Andre Maeder , Georges Meynet

The magneto-rotational instability (MRI) - which is due to an interplay between a sheared background and the magnetic field - is commonly considered a key ingredient for developing and sustaining turbulence in the outer envelope of binary…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-11-27 T. Celora , I. Hawke , N. Andersson , G. L. Comer