Turbulent viscosity acting on the equilibrium tidal flow in convective stars

TL;DR

This study uses direct numerical simulations to investigate turbulent viscosity in convective stars, revealing two scaling regimes that help explain tidal interactions in close binary systems.

Contribution

First direct numerical simulations of convection interacting with tidal flow in stars, reconciling two previously disputed scaling laws for turbulent viscosity.

Findings

Quadratic scaling of viscosity in high-frequency regime

Linear scaling of viscosity in intermediate regime

Both regimes are relevant for binary star evolution

Abstract

Convection is thought to act as a turbulent viscosity in damping tidal flows and in driving spin and orbital evolution in close convective binary systems. This turbulent viscosity should be reduced, compared to mixing-length predictions, when the forcing (tidal) frequency $|{\omega}_t|$ exceeds the turnover frequency ${\omega}_{cv}$ of the dominant convective eddies. However, two contradictory scaling laws have been proposed and this issue remains highly disputed. To revisit this controversy, we conduct the first direct numerical simulations (DNS) of convection interacting with the equilibrium tidal flow in an idealized global model of a low-mass star. We present direct computations of the turbulent effective viscosity, ${\nu}_E$, acting on the equilibrium tidal flow. We unexpectedly report the coexistence of the two disputed scaling laws, which reconciles previous theoretical (and numerical) findings. We recover the universal quadratic scaling ${\nu}_E \propto (|{\omega}_t|/{\omega}_{cv})^{-2}$ in the high-frequency regime $|{\omega}_t|/{\omega}_{cv} \gg 1$. Our results also support the linear scaling ${\nu}_E \propto (|{\omega}_t|/{\omega}_{cv})^{-1}$ in an intermediate regime with $1 \leq |{\omega}_t|/{\omega}_{cv} = \mathcal{O}(10)$. Both regimes may be relevant to explain the observed properties of close binaries, including spin synchronization of solar-type stars and the circularization of low-mass stars. The robustness of these two regimes of tidal dissipation, and the transition between them, should be explored further in more realistic models. A better understanding of the interaction between convection and tidal flows is indeed essential to correctly interpret observations of close binary stars and short-period planetary orbits.