The excitation of inertial-acoustic waves through turbulent fluctuations in accretion discs II: Numerical Simulations with MRI driven turbulence
Abstract
We present fully three-dimensional local simulations of compressible MRI turbulence with the object of studying and elucidating the excitation of the non-axisymmetric inertial acoustic waves that are observed to always be present. They are potentially important for affecting protoplanetary migration through the action of associated stochastic gravitational forces and producing residual transport in MHD inactive regions into which they may propagate. The simulations we perform are with zero net flux and produce mean activity levels corresponding to the Shakura & Sunyaev alpha ~ 0.005, being at the lower end of the range usually considered in accretion disc modelling. We reveal the nature of the mechanism responsible for the excitation of these waves by determining the time dependent evolution of the Fourier transforms of the participating state variables. The dominant waves are found to have no vertical structure and to be excited during periodically repeating swings in which they change from leading to trailing. The initial phase of the evolution of such a swing is found to be in excellent agreement with that expected from the WKBJ theory developed in a preceding paper by Heinemann & Papaloizou. However, shortly after the attainment of the expected maximum wave amplitude, the waves begin to be damped on account of the formation of weak shocks. As expected from the theory the waves are seen to shorten in radial wavelength as they propagate. As a consequence the waves are almost always seen to be in the non linear regime. The mean angular momentum transport associated with the waves generated in our simulations is estimated to be a small but significant fraction of roughly 0.1 of that associated with the mean Reynolds stress.Keywords
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