Unifying Transport Models of Thermohaline Convection in Stars

Abstract

Thermohaline convection is a standard chemical mixing process in stellar interiors, yet its mixing efficiency is not fully settled. Competing theories predict turbulent diffusion coefficients, $D_{\mu }$, that can differ by orders of magnitude, leading to uncertainties in stellar models and interpretations of observations. This paper explores a potential resolution to existing discrepancies. We first complete the linear stability theory and identify two types of unstable modes: slow growing modes at large length scales and fast growing modes at small length scales. We then reevaluate $D_{\mu }$ considering the full spectrum of unstable modes and find that it can self-consistently interpolate between previously proposed theoretical scalings across the instability parameter space. The question of thermohaline mixing efficiency in stars may be settled by future simulations that quantify the scale-dependent contributions of fast and slow modes to $D_{\mu }$ and determine how the modes dominating the transport change across parameter space.