On thermonuclear convection: I shellular instability

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Abstract
As the sun evolves, a sharp compositional peak of He 3 builds up in the core. Nuclear reactions involving He 3 are very temperature sensitive, as a result, this He 3 layer is susceptible to thermal instability. The small horizontal wavenumber g-modes have large time scales, comparable to the thermal time scale. Using a two-layer model, we find that such “shellular modes” are the most unstable. As a result of nuclear heating, these modes may be excited in the solar core in a shallow layer confined to the He 3 zone. A possible effect of such shellular convection on the solar neutrino problem is discussed. In this paper we discuss the linear theory; the nonlinear effects will be treated in a subsequent paper.

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