A pure hydrodynamic instability in shear flows and its application to astrophysical accretion disks

Abstract

We provide the possible resolution for the century old problem of hydrodynamic shear flows, which are apparently stable in linear analysis but shown to be turbulent in astrophysically observed data and experiments. This mismatch is noticed in a variety of systems, from laboratory to astrophysical flows. There are so many uncountable attempts made so far to resolve this mismatch, beginning with the early work of Kelvin, Rayleigh, and Reynolds towards the end of the nineteenth century. Here we show that the presence of stochastic noise, whose inevitable presence should not be neglected in the stability analysis of shear flows, leads to pure hydrodynamic linear instability therein. This explains the origin of turbulence, which has been observed/interpreted in astrophysical accretion disks, laboratory experiments and direct numerical simulations. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first solution to the long standing problem of hydrodynamic instability of Rayleigh stable flows.

arXiv comment14 pages including 10 figures; accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (31)

• Linear and nonlinear evolution of the vertical shear instability in accretion discs
• Turbulence in Accretion Disks. Vorticity Generation and Angular Momentum Transport via the Global Baroclinic Instability
• MHD simulations of the magnetorotational instability in a shearing box with zero net flux. I. The issue of convergence
• The rise of fully turbulent flow
• Stability and turbulent transport in rotating shear flows: prescription from analysis of cylindrical and plane Couette flows data
• Cooling Requirements for the Vertical Shear Instability in Protoplanetary Disks
• Local Hydrodynamic Stability of Accretion Disks
• Convective Overstability in radially stratified accretion disks under thermal relaxation
• On the relevance of subcritical hydrodynamic turbulence to accretion disk transport
• Vertical shear instability in accretion disc models with radiation transport
• An hydrodynamic shear instability in stratified disks
• Zombie Vortex Instability I: A Purely Hydrodynamic Instability to Resurrect the Dead Zones of Protoplanetary Disks
• Convective overstability in accretion disks: 3D linear analysis and nonlinear saturation
• Magnetohydrodynamic Instabilities in Shearing, Rotating, Stratified Winds and Disks
• Stability and angular-momentum transport of fluid flows between corotating cylinders
• Bypass to Turbulence in Hydrodynamic Accretion: Lagrangian Analysis of Energy Growth
• On the vertical-shear instability in astrophysical discs
• Vortex formation in protoplanetary discs induced by the vertical shear instability
• MHD instability in differentially rotating cylindric flows
• Bypass to Turbulence in Hydrodynamic Accretion Disks: An Eigenvalue Approach
• Self-Replicating Three-Dimensional Vortices in Neutrally-Stable Stratified Rotating Shear Flows
• Angular momentum transport and turbulence in laboratory models of Keplerian flows
• On the convective overstability in protoplanetary discs
• Linear analysis of the vertical shear instability: outstanding issues and improved solutions (Research Note)
• Growing pseudo-eigenmodes and positive logarithmic norms in rotating shear flows
• Stochastically driven instability in rotating shear flows
• Can the viscosity in astrophysical black hole accretion disks be close to its string theory bound?
• Cross-correlation Aided Transport in Stochastically Driven Accretion Flows
• Origin of nonlinearity and plausible turbulence by hydromagnetic transient growth in accretion disks: Faster growth rate than magnetorotational instability
• Magnetohydrodynamic stability of stochastically driven accretion flows
• Thermal Equilibrium Curves and Turbulent Mixing in Keplerian Accretion Disks

Cited by in corpus (5)

• PT-symmetric spectral singularity and negative frequency resonance
• Origin of hydrodynamic instability from noise: from laboratory flow to accretion disk
• Hydrodynamical instability with noise in the Keplerian accretion discs: Modified Landau equation
• Forced linear shear flows with rotation: rotating Couette-Poiseuille flow, its stability and astrophysical implications
• The competition between the hydrodynamic instability from noise and magnetorotational instability in the Keplerian disks