Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userConvective velocity suppression via the enhancement of subadiabatic layer: Role of the effective Prandtl number
121
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
It has recently been recognized that the convective velocities achieved in the current solar convection simulations might be over-estimated. The newly-revealed effects of the prevailing small-scale magnetic field within the convection zone may offer possible solutions to this problem. The small-scale magnetic fields can reduce the convective amplitude of small-scale motions through the Lorentz-force feedback, which concurrently inhibits the turbulent mixing of entropy between upflows and downflows. As a result, the effective Prandtl number may exceed unity inside the solar convection zone. In this paper, we propose and numerically confirm a possible suppression mechanism of convective velocity in the effectively high-Prandtl number regime. If the effective horizontal thermal diffusivity decreases (the Prandtl number accordingly increases), the subadiabatic layer which is formed near the base of the convection zone by continuous depositions of low entropy transported by adiabatically downflowing plumes is enhanced and extended. The global convective amplitude in the high-Prandtl thermal convection is thus reduced especially in the lower part of the convection zone via the change in the mean entropy profile which becomes more subadiabatic near the base and less superadiabatic in the bulk.
rate research
Read More
(abridged) Context: The ratio of kinematic viscosity to thermal diffusivity, the Prandtl number, is much smaller than unity in stellar convection zones. Aims: To study the statistics of convective flows and energy transport as functions of the Prandtl number. Methods: Three-dimensional numerical simulations convection in Cartesian geometry are used. The convection zone (CZ) is embedded between two stably stratified layers. Statistics and transport properties of up- and downflows are studied separately. Results: The rms velocity increases with decreasing Prandtl number. At the same time the filling factor of downflows decreases and leads to stronger downflows at lower Prandtl numbers, and to a strong dependence of overshooting on the Prandtl number. Velocity power spectra do not show marked changes as a function of Prandtl number. At the highest Reynolds numbers the velocity power spectra are compatible with the Bolgiano-Obukhov $k^{-11/5}$ scaling. The horizontally averaged convected energy flux ($overline{F}_{rm conv}$) is independent of the Prandtl number within the CZ. However, the upflows (downflows) are the dominant contribution to the convected flux at low (high) Prandtl number. These results are similar to those from Rayleigh-Benard convection in the low Prandtl number regime where convection is vigorously turbulent but inefficient at transporting energy. Conclusions: The current results indicate a strong dependence of convective overshooting and energy flux on the Prandtl number. Numerical simulations of astrophysical convection often use Prandtl number of unity. The current results suggest that this can lead to misleading results and that the astrophysically relevant low Prandtl number regime is qualitatively different from the parameters regimes explored in typical simulations.
We present numerical simulations of hydrodynamic overshooting convection in local Cartesian domains. We find that a substantial fraction of the lower part of the convection zone (CZ) is stably stratified according to the Schwarzschild criterion while the enthalpy flux is outward directed. This occurs when the heat conduction profile at the bottom of the CZ is smoothly varying, based either on a Kramers-like opacity prescription as a function of temperature and density or a static profile of a similar shape. We show that the subadiabatic layer arises due to nonlocal energy transport by buoyantly driven downflows in the upper parts of the CZ. Analysis of the force balance of the upflows and downflows confirms that convection is driven by cooling at the surface. We find that the commonly used prescription for the convective enthalpy flux being proportional to the negative entropy gradient does not hold in the stably stratified layers where the flux is positive. We demonstrate the existence of a non-gradient contribution to the enthalpy flux, which is estimated to be important throughout the convective layer. A quantitative analysis of downflows indicates a transition from a tree-like structure where smaller downdrafts merge into larger ones in the upper parts to a structure in the deeper parts where a height-independent number of strong downdrafts persist. This change of flow topology occurs when a substantial subadiabatic layer is present in the lower part of the CZ.
(abridged) Context: Turbulent diffusion of large-scale flows and magnetic fields play major roles in many astrophysical systems. Aims: Our goal is to compute turbulent viscosity and magnetic diffusivity, relevant for diffusing large-scale flows and magnetic fields, respectively, and their ratio, the turbulent magnetic Prandtl number, ${rm Pm}_{rm t}$, for isotropically forced homogeneous turbulence. Methods: We use simulations of forced turbulence in fully periodic cubes composed of isothermal gas with an imposed large-scale sinusoidal shear flow. Turbulent viscosity is computed either from the resulting Reynolds stress or from the decay rate of the large-scale flow. Turbulent magnetic diffusivity is computed using the test-field method. The scale dependence of the coefficients is studied by varying the wavenumber of the imposed sinusoidal shear and test fields. Results: We find that turbulent viscosity and magnetic diffusivity are in general of the same order of magnitude. Furthermore, the turbulent viscosity depends on the fluid Reynolds number (${rm Re}$) and scale separation ratio of turbulence. The scale dependence of the turbulent viscosity is found to be well approximated by a Lorentzian. The results for the turbulent transport coefficients appear to converge at sufficiently high values of ${rm Re}$ and the scale separation ratio. However, a weak decreasing trend is found even at the largest values of ${rm Re}$. The turbulent magnetic Prandtl number converges to a value that is slightly below unity for large ${rm Re}$ whereas for small ${rm Re}$, we find values between 0.5 and 0.6. Conclusions: The turbulent magnetic diffusivity is in general consistently higher than the turbulent viscosity. The actual value of ${rm Pm}_{rm t}$ found from the simulations ($approx0.9ldots0.95$) at large ${rm Re}$ and scale separation ratio is higher than any of the analytic predictions.
Efforts to detect low-mass exoplanets using stellar radial velocities (RVs) are currently limited by magnetic photospheric activity. Suppression of convective blueshift is the dominant magnetic contribution to RV variability in low-activity Sun-like stars. Due to convective plasma motions, the magnitude of RV contributions from the suppression of convective blueshift is related to the depth of formation of photospheric spectral lines of a given species used to compute the RV time series. Meunier et al. (2017), used this relation to demonstrate a method for spectroscopic extraction of the suppression of convective blueshift in order to isolate RV contributions, including planetary RVs, that contribute equally to the timeseries for each spectral line. Here, we extract disk-integrated solar RVs from observations over a 2.5 year time span made with the solar telescope integrated with the HARPS-N spectrograph at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain). We apply the methods outlined by Meunier et al. (2017). We are not, however, able to isolate physically meaningful contributions of the suppression of convective blueshift from this solar dataset, potentially because our dataset is from solar minimum when the suppression of convective blueshift may not sufficiently dominate activity contributions to RVs. This result indicates that, for low-activity Sun-like stars, one must include additional RV contributions from activity sources not considered in the Meunier et al. (2017) model at different timescales as well as instrumental variation in order to reach the sub-meter per second RV sensitivity necessary to detect low-mass planets in orbit around Sun-like stars.
In this paper, we investigate the upward overshooting by three-dimensional numerical simulations. We find that the above convectively stable zone can be partitioned into three layers: the thermal adjustment layer (mixing both entropy and material), the turbulent dissipation layer (mixing material but not entropy), and the thermal dissipation layer (mixing neither entropy nor material). The turbulent dissipation layer is separated from the thermal adjustment layer and the thermal dissipation layer by the first and second zero points of the vertical velocity correlation. The simulation results are in good agreement with the prediction of the one-dimensional turbulent Reynolds stress model. First, the layer structure is similar. Second, the upper boundary of the thermal adjustment layer is close to the peak of the magnitude of the temperature perturbation. Third, the Peclet number at the upper boundary of the turbulent dissipation layer is close to 1. In addition, we have studied the scalings of the overshooting distance on the relative stability parameter $S$, the Prandtl number $rm Pr$, and the Peclet number $rm Pe$. The scaling on $S$ is not unique. The trend is that the overshooting distance decreases with $S$. Fitting on $rm Pr$ shows that the overshooting distance increases with $rm Pr$. Fitting on $rm Pe$ shows that the overshooting distance decreases with $rm Pe$. Finally, we calculate the ratio of the thickness of the turbulent dissipation layer to that of the thermal adjustment layer. The ratio remains almost constant, with an approximate value of 2.4.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
