A viscous instability in axially symmetric laminar shear flows

Abstract

A viscous instability in shearing laminar axisymmetric hydrodynamic flows around a gravitating centre is described. In the linearized hydrodynamic equations written in the Boussinesq approximation with microscopic molecular transport coefficients, the instability arises when the viscous dissipation is taken into account in the energy equation. Using the local WKB approximation, we derive a third-order algebraic dispersion equation with two modes representing the modified Rayleigh modes R+ and R-, and the third X-mode. We show that in thin accretion flows the viscosity destabilizes one of the Rayleigh modes in a wide range of wavenumbers, while the X-mode always remains stable. In Keplerian flows, the instability increment is found to be a few Keplerian rotational periods at wavelengths with kr ∼ 10-50. This instability may cause turbulence in astrophysical accretion discs even in the absence of magnetic field.