GAFD Seminar: Craig Duguid (Durham University)

The dissipation of tidally excited flows drives the spin and orbital evolution of various astrophysical systems such as hot Jupiters, close binary stars, and planetary satellites. However, the fluid dynamical mechanisms responsible for the dissipation in stellar interiors remains poorly understood. One key mechanism is the interaction between tidal flows and turbulent convection which is thought to act as an eddy (turbulent) viscosity damping the large-scale flow. Theory and simulations highlight that the efficiency of this mechanism depends on the frequency of the tidal forcing (related to the orbital period). However, the influence of stellar rotation has received little attention. While it is well known that rotation influences convective behaviour, it is unclear if the rotation also influences the interaction between the shear and the convection. Extending our previous work, we perform a wide parameter survey using hydrodynamical simulations to explore the interplay between an oscillatory tidal-like shear flow, convection, and rotation. Rotating mixing length theory arguments are compared to simulation results to determine if the rotation modifies the interaction beyond its influence on the underlying convection. We also extend a previous multi scale asymptotic analysis to include rotation in the high tidal frequency regime.