Vorticity production through rotation, shear, and baroclinicity

DOI10.1051/0004-6361/201015661MaRDI QIDQ4905697zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Fabio del Sordo, A. Brandenburg

Publication date 20 February 2013

Published in Astronomy & Astrophysics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1008.5281

zbMATH Keywords

turbulencemagnetohydrodynamics (MHD)dynamoISM: bubblesgalaxies: magnetic fields

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Magnetohydrodynamics and electrohydrodynamics (76W05) Electromagnetic fields in general relativity and gravitational theory (83C50) Galactic and stellar structure (85A15) Hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic problems in astronomy and astrophysics (85A30)

Abstract: In the absence of rotation and shear, and under the assumption of constant temperature or specific entropy, purely potential forcing by localized expansion waves is known to produce irrotational flows that have no vorticity. Here we study the production of vorticity under idealized conditions when there is rotation, shear, or baroclinicity, to address the problem of vorticity generation in the interstellar medium in a systematic fashion. We use three-dimensional periodic box numerical simulations to investigate the various effects in isolation. We find that for slow rotation, vorticity production in an isothermal gas is small in the sense that the ratio of the root-mean-square values of vorticity and velocity is small compared with the wavenumber of the energy-carrying motions. For Coriolis numbers above a certain level, vorticity production saturates at a value where the aforementioned ratio becomes comparable with the wavenumber of the energy-carrying motions. Shear also raises the vorticity production, but no saturation is found. When the assumption of isothermality is dropped, there is significant vorticity production by the baroclinic term once the turbulence becomes supersonic. In galaxies, shear and rotation are estimated to be insufficient to produce significant amounts of vorticity, leaving therefore only the baroclinic term as the most favorable candidate. We also demonstrate vorticity production visually as a result of colliding shock fronts.

Recommendations

• Vorticity generation behind interstellar shock fronts
• Vorticity production in shock diffraction
• Baroclinic vortex sheet production by shocks and expansion waves
• The subcritical baroclinic instability in local accretion disc models
• Vorticity dynamics in a breaking internal gravity wave. Part 1. Initial instability evolution

Cited in

(5)

• Cosmological perturbations: vorticity, isocurvature and magnetic fields
• Nonlinear ion acoustic waves scattered by vortexes
• Baroclinic vortex sheet production by shocks and expansion waves
• On the well-posedness of relativistic viscous fluids with non-zero vorticity
• Spectral characterisation of inertial particle clustering in turbulence

This page was built for publication: Vorticity production through rotation, shear, and baroclinicity

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q4905697)