Pulsation-driven mean zonal and meridional flows in rotating massive stars

TL;DR

This paper investigates how pulsation-driven axisymmetric flows influence the angular momentum and chemical distribution in rotating massive stars, highlighting the significance of wave-mean flow interactions in stellar evolution.

Contribution

It develops a second-order perturbation framework to compute 2-D mean flows driven by non-axisymmetric oscillations in rotating massive stars, revealing their surface and internal structures.

Findings

Surface layers exhibit large amplitude oscillation-driven flows.

Low frequency retrograde modes can transport angular momentum to the surface.

Pulsation and rotation can induce comparable meridional flow amplitudes.

Abstract

Zonal and meridional axisymmetric flows can deeply impact the rotational and chemical evolution of stars. Therefore, momentum exchanges between waves propagating in stars, differential rotation, and meridional circulation must be carefully evaluated. In this work, we study axisymmetric mean flows in rapidly and initially uniformly rotating massive stars driven by small amplitude non-axisymmetric $\kappa$-driven oscillations. We treat them as perturbations of second-order of the oscillation amplitudes and derive their governing equations as a set of coupled linear ordinary differential equations. This allows us to compute 2-D zonal and meridional mean flows driven by low frequency $g$- and $r$-modes in slowly pulsating B (SPB) stars and $p$-modes in $\beta$ Cephei stars. Oscillation-driven mean flows usually have large amplitudes only in the surface layers. In addition, the kinetic energy of the induced 2-D zonal rotational motions is much larger than that of the meridional motions. In some cases, meridional flows have a complex radial and latitudinal structure. For SPB stars, we find that there are low frequency retrograde $g$-modes and $r$-modes that drive mean flows with positive velocity components in the radial and azimuthal directions at the stellar surface. This suggests that low frequency retrograde modes can transport angular momentum to the surface layers, which may help to form a circumstellar gaseous disc. Moreover, pulsation-driven and rotation-driven meridional flows can have similar amplitudes. These results show the importance of taking wave-- mean flow interactions into account when studying the evolution of massive stars.