Wavelike nature of the vertical shear instability in global protoplanetary disks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the saturation mechanism of the vertical shear instability in protoplanetary disks, revealing that it manifests as large-scale inertial waves separated by corotation resonances, with implications for future simulations.

Contribution

It develops a linear inertial-wave theory for VSI and demonstrates how the instability saturates through radial wave zones in global disk simulations.

Findings

VSI saturates by forming radial wave zones separated by corotation resonances.

The saturated VSI manifests as large-scale inertial waves with modest radial turbulence variations.

Future simulations should use large radial domains and fine resolution to capture these structures.

Abstract

The vertical shear instability (VSI) is a robust phenomenon in irradiated protoplanetary disks (PPDs). The majority of previous numerical simulations have focused on the turbulent properties of its saturated state. However, the saturation of the VSI manifests as large-scale coherent radially travelling inertial waves. In this paper, we study inertial-wave-disk interactions and their impact on VSI saturation. Inertial-wave linear theory is developed and applied to a representative global 2D simulation using the Athena++ code. It is found that the VSI saturates by separating the disk into several radial wave zones roughly demarcated by corotation resonances (turning points); this structure also manifests in modest radial variations in the vertical turbulence strength. Future numerical work should employ large radial domains to accommodate this radial structure of the VSI, while concurrently adopting sufficiently fine resolutions to resolve the parametric instability that attacks the saturated VSI inertial waves.