Transport of angular momentum by waves in stars

Abstract

Transport of angular momentum is a long-standing problem in stellar physics which recently became more acute thanks to the observations of the space-borne mission Kepler. Indeed, the need for an efficient mechanism able to explain the rotation profile of low-mass stars has been emphasized by asteroseimology and waves are among the potential candidates to do so. In this article, our objective is not to review all the literature related to the transport of angular momentum by waves but rather to emphasize the way it is to be computed in stellar models. We stress that to model wave transport of angular momentum is a non-trivial issue that requires to properly account for interactions between meridional circulation and waves. Also, while many authors only considered the effect of the wave momentum flux in the mean momentum equation, we show that this is an incomplete picture that prevents from grasping the main physics of the problem. We thus present the Transform Eulerian Formalism (TEM) which enable to properly address the problem.