Linear and Weakly Nonlinear Analysis of the Magneto-Rotational-Instability in Thin Keplerian Discs

The linear instability of thin, vertically-isothermal Keplerian discs, under the influence of axial magnetic field is investigated. Solutions of the stability problem are found explicitly by asymptotic expansions in the small aspect ratio of the disc. It is shown that the perturbations are decoupled into in-plane and vertical modes. Exact expressions for the growth rates as well as the number of unstable modes are derived. Those are the discrete counterpart of the continuous infinite homogeneous cylinder magnetorotational (MRI) spectrum. In addition, a weakly nonlinear analysis of the MRI is performed. It is shown that near the instability threshold the latter is saturated by the stable magnetoacoustic modes.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the workshop "Waves and Instabilities in Space and Astrophysical plasmas" (WISAP-2011), June 201

Non-exponential hydrodynamical growth in density-stratified thin Keplerian discs

The short time evolution of three dimensional small perturbations is studied. Exhibiting spectral asymptotic stability, thin discs are nonetheless shown to host intensive hydrodynamical activity in the shape of non modal growth of initial small perturbations. Two mechanisms that lead to such behavior are identified and studied, namely, non-resonant excitation of vertically confined sound waves by stable planar inertia-coriolis modes that results in linear growth with time, as well as resonant coupling of those two modes that leads to a quadratic growth of the initial perturbations. It is further speculated that the non modal growth can give rise to secondary strato-rotational instabilities and thus lead to a new route to turbulence generation in thin discs

An optimal transient growth of small perturbations in thin gaseous discs

A thin gaseous disc with an almost keplerian angular velocity profile, bounded by a free surface and rotating around point-mass gravitating object is nearly spectrally stable. Despite that the substantial transient growth of linear perturbations measured by the evolution of their acoustic energy is possible. This fact is demonstrated for the simple model of a non-viscous polytropic thin disc of a finite radial size where the small adiabatic perturbations are considered as a linear combination of neutral modes with a corotational radius located beyond the outer boundary of the flow.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Ast