Turbulent mixing in a non-magnetic corona: physical and numerical factors
Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol 365, p. 228-240
R. Grappin, J. Léorat
Abstract
We study the shear instability and turbulent mixing of radial streams originating
in thermal inhomogeneities of a non-magnetic corona, by solving the time-dependent
solution of the axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations within a central gravitational
field and polytropic index unity. Cold regions lead to cold wakes, which
can become unstable and eventually lead to turbulent mixing (Grappin et
al., 1997). The aim of this work is to understand the conditions for the
development of the instability, which in many aspects is close to the standard
Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, but in which several features specific to
the solar wind intervene. A prerequisite is to reach high enough Reynolds
number, i.e., to reduce damping, compared to molecular viscous damping,
without generating spurious noise (mainly Gibbs effect) which could trigger
artificially the instability. This is achieved here via a nonlinear filtering
scheme, first developed here on the simpler problem of shock formation
(Burgers equation), and then applied to shear flows. We conclude that cold
wakes generated by cold regions in the corona are made unstable by the
pinching effect of surrounding hotter streams. This effect is extremely
sensitive to the mean temperature, because the pinching effect is.
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