Convective Overstability in radially stratified accretion disks under thermal relaxation

Hubert Klahr, Alexander Hubbard

Published 2014-03-26, updated 2014-04-01Version 2

This letter expands the stability criterion for radially stratified, vertically {unstratified} accretion disks incorporating thermal relaxation. We find a linear amplification of epicyclic oscillations in these disks that depends on the effective cooling time, i.e. an overstability. The growth rates of the overstability vanish for both extreme cases, e.g. infinite cooling time and instantaneous cooling, i.e. the adiabatic and fully isothermal cases. However, for thermal relaxation times $\tau$ on the order of the orbital frequency, $\tau\Omega \sim 1$, modes grow at a rate proportional to the square of the Brunt-V\"ais\"al\"a frequency. The overstability is based on epicyclic motions, with the thermal relaxation causing gas to heat while radially displaced inwards, and cool while radially displaced outwards. This causes the gas to have a lower density when moving outwards compared to when it moves inwards, so it feels the outwards directed pressure force more strongly on that leg of the journey. We suggest the term ``Convective Overstability" for the phenomenon that has already been numerically studied in the non-linear regime in the context of amplifying vortices in disks, under the name ``Subcritical Baroclinic Instability". The point of the present paper is to make clear that vortex formation in three-dimensional disks is neither subcritical, i.e. does not need a finite perturbation, nor is it baroclinic in the sense of geophysical fluid dynamics, which requires on vertical shear. We find that Convective Overstability is a linear instability that will operate under a wide range of physical conditions for circumstellar disks.