A high resolution simulation of protoplanetary disk turbulence driven by the vertical shear instability

TL;DR

This paper presents a high-resolution 3D simulation of protoplanetary disk turbulence driven by the vertical shear instability, revealing detailed flow structures, angular momentum transport mechanisms, and spectral properties.

Contribution

It introduces a high-resolution simulation of VSI-driven turbulence in 3D disks, highlighting new flow features and spectral behaviors not previously observed.

Findings

Vertical jets create N-shaped velocity profiles.

Absence of large vortices driven by Rossby wave instability.

Kinetic energy spectrum follows a -1.84 power law in radial wavenumber.

Abstract

A high resolution fourth-order Pad\'e scheme is used to simulate locally isothermal 3D disk turbulence driven by the vertical shear instability (VSI) using 268.4 M points. In the early non-linear period of axisymmetric VSI, angular momentum transport by vertical jets creates correlated N-shaped radial profiles of perturbation vertical and azimuthal velocity. This implies dominance of positive perturbation vertical vorticity layers and a recently discovered angular momentum staircase with respect to radius ($r$). These features are present in 3D in a weaker form. The 3D flow consists of vertically and azimuthally coherent turbulent shear layers containing small vortices with all three vorticity components active. Previously observed large persistent vortices in the interior of the domain driven by the Rossby wave instability are absent. We speculate that this is due to a weaker angular momentum staircase in 3D in the present simulations compared to a previous simulation. The turbulent viscosity parameter $\alpha(r)$ increases linearly with $r$. At intermediate resolution, the value of $\alpha(r)$ at midradius is close to that of a previous simulation. The specific kinetic energy spectrum with respect to radial wavenumber has a power law region with exponent $-1.84$, close to the value $-2$ expected for shear layers. The spectrum with respect to azimuthal wavenumber has a $-5/3$ region and lacks a $-5$ region reported in an earlier study. Finally, it is found that axisymmetric VSI has artifacts at late times, including a very strong angular momentum staircase, which in 3D is present weakly in the disk's upper layers.