A PURE HYDRODYNAMIC INSTABILITY IN SHEAR FLOWS AND ITS APPLICATION TO ASTROPHYSICAL ACCRETION DISKS

Nath, Sujit Kumar and Mukhopadhyay, Banibrata (2016) A PURE HYDRODYNAMIC INSTABILITY IN SHEAR FLOWS AND ITS APPLICATION TO ASTROPHYSICAL ACCRETION DISKS. In: ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, 830 (2).

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Abstract

We provide a 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 toward 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.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Additional Information:	Copy right for this article belongs to the IOP PUBLISHING LTD, TEMPLE CIRCUS, TEMPLE WAY, BRISTOL BS1 6BE, ENGLAND
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	07 Dec 2016 05:03
Last Modified:	07 Dec 2016 05:03
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/55472

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