3,751 research outputs found
Gravito-inertial waves in a differentially rotating spherical shell
The gravito-inertial waves propagating over a shellular baroclinic flow
inside a rotating spherical shell are analysed using the Boussinesq
approximation. The wave properties are examined by computing paths of
characteristics in the non-dissipative limit, and by solving the full
dissipative eigenvalue problem using a high-resolution spectral method.
Gravito-inertial waves are found to obey a mixed-type second-order operator and
to be often focused around short-period attractors of characteristics or
trapped in a wedge formed by turning surfaces and boundaries. We also find
eigenmodes that show a weak dependence with respect to viscosity and heat
diffusion just like truly regular modes. Some axisymmetric modes are found
unstable and likely destabilized by baroclinic instabilities. Similarly, some
non-axisymmetric modes that meet a critical layer (or corotation resonance) can
turn unstable at sufficiently low diffusivities. In all cases, the instability
is driven by the differential rotation. For many modes of the spectrum, neat
power laws are found for the dependence of the damping rates with diffusion
coefficients, but the theoretical explanation for the exponent values remains
elusive in general. The eigenvalue spectrum turns out to be very rich and
complex, which lets us suppose an even richer and more complex spectrum for
rotating stars or planets that own a differential rotation driven by
baroclinicity.Comment: 33 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in Journal of Fluid
Mechanic
Generalized harmonic formulation in spherical symmetry
In this pedagogically structured article, we describe a generalized harmonic
formulation of the Einstein equations in spherical symmetry which is regular at
the origin. The generalized harmonic approach has attracted significant
attention in numerical relativity over the past few years, especially as
applied to the problem of binary inspiral and merger. A key issue when using
the technique is the choice of the gauge source functions, and recent work has
provided several prescriptions for gauge drivers designed to evolve these
functions in a controlled way. We numerically investigate the parameter spaces
of some of these drivers in the context of fully non-linear collapse of a real,
massless scalar field, and determine nearly optimal parameter settings for
specific situations. Surprisingly, we find that many of the drivers that
perform well in 3+1 calculations that use Cartesian coordinates, are
considerably less effective in spherical symmetry, where some of them are, in
fact, unstable.Comment: 47 pages, 15 figures. v2: Minor corrections, including 2 added
references; journal version
Visco-resistive shear wave dissipation in magnetic X-points
We consider the viscous and resistive dissipation of perpendicularly polarized shear waves propagating within a planar magnetic X-point. To highlight the role played by the two-dimensional geometry, the damping of travelling AlfvĂšn waves that propagate within an unbounded, but non-orthogonal X-point topology is analyzed. It is shown that the separatrix geometry affects both the dissipation time and the visco-resistive scaling of the energy decay. Our main focus, however, is on developing a theoretical description of standing wave dissipation for orthogonal, line-tied X-points. A combination of numerical and analytic treatments confirms that phase mixing provides a very effective mechanism for dissipating the wave energy. We show that wave decay comprises two main phases, an initial rapid decay followed by slower eigenmode evolution, both of which are only weakly dependent on the visco-resistive damping coefficients
Efficient PML for the wave equation
In the last decade, the perfectly matched layer (PML) approach has proved a
flexible and accurate method for the simulation of waves in unbounded media.
Most PML formulations, however, usually require wave equations stated in their
standard second-order form to be reformulated as first-order systems, thereby
introducing many additional unknowns. To circumvent this cumbersome and
somewhat expensive step, we instead propose a simple PML formulation directly
for the wave equation in its second-order form. Inside the absorbing layer, our
formulation requires only two auxiliary variables in two space dimensions and
four auxiliary variables in three space dimensions; hence it is cheap to
implement. Since our formulation requires no higher derivatives, it is also
easily coupled with standard finite difference or finite element methods.
Strong stability is proved while numerical examples in two and three space
dimensions illustrate the accuracy and long time stability of our PML
formulation.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure
Continuations of the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation beyond the singularity
We present four continuations of the critical nonlinear \schro equation (NLS)
beyond the singularity: 1) a sub-threshold power continuation, 2) a
shrinking-hole continuation for ring-type solutions, 3) a vanishing
nonlinear-damping continuation, and 4) a complex Ginzburg-Landau (CGL)
continuation. Using asymptotic analysis, we explicitly calculate the limiting
solutions beyond the singularity. These calculations show that for generic
initial data that leads to a loglog collapse, the sub-threshold power limit is
a Bourgain-Wang solution, both before and after the singularity, and the
vanishing nonlinear-damping and CGL limits are a loglog solution before the
singularity, and have an infinite-velocity{\rev{expanding core}} after the
singularity. Our results suggest that all NLS continuations share the universal
feature that after the singularity time , the phase of the singular core
is only determined up to multiplication by . As a result,
interactions between post-collapse beams (filaments) become chaotic. We also
show that when the continuation model leads to a point singularity and
preserves the NLS invariance under the transformation and
, the singular core of the weak solution is symmetric
with respect to . Therefore, the sub-threshold power and
the{\rev{shrinking}}-hole continuations are symmetric with respect to ,
but continuations which are based on perturbations of the NLS equation are
generically asymmetric
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