Relativistic Centrifugal Instability

TL;DR

This paper extends the understanding of centrifugal instability in relativistic astrophysical jets by generalizing classical criteria and supporting findings with computer simulations, highlighting the dominance of CFI over Kelvin-Helmholtz instability.

Contribution

It generalizes the Rayleigh criterion for centrifugal instability to relativistic flows and validates it through computer simulations of rotating cylindrical interfaces.

Findings

CFI may dominate over Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in relativistic jets.

The generalized Rayleigh criterion effectively predicts CFI in relativistic rotating flows.

Simulations support the analytic criterion for cylindrical flow interfaces.

Abstract

Near the central engine, many astrophysical jets are expected to rotate about their axis. Further out they are expected to go through the processes of reconfinement and recollimation. In both these cases, the flow streams along a concave surface and hence, it is subject to the centrifugal force. It is well known that such flows may experience the Centrifugal Instability (CFI), to which there are many laboratory examples. The recent computer simulations of relativistic jets from Active Galactic Nuclei undergoing the process of reconfinement show that in such jets CFI may dominate over the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability associated with velocity shear (Gourgouliatos and Komissarov 2018). In this letter, we generalise the Rayleigh criterion for CFI in rotating fluids to relativistic flows using a heuristic analysis. We also present the results of computer simulations which support our analytic criterion for the case of an interface separating two uniformly-rotating cylindrical flows. We discuss the difference between CFI and the Rayleigh-Taylor instability in flows with curved streamlines.