TAPIR Seminar

In person: 370 Cahill. To Join via Zoom: 851 0756 7442

Abstract: The same kinds of double-diffusive convection (DDC) that occur in the oceans also occur in stellar interiors, where they provide key forms of chemical mixing in radiation zones and are thought to explain some discrepancies between observations and standard stellar models. I will discuss how the salt finger branch of DDC, which occurs in tropical ocean waters, can explain a particular discrepancy in red giant branch stars, and how its likely occurrence in polluted WDs raises concerns with inferred rates of accretion from these WDs' debris disks. I will also show that the dynamics of salt fingers in these stars are often surprisingly similar to oceans (despite the enormous difference in fluid properties between stellar plasmas and salt water), and that the large body of work studying salt fingers at large Prandtl numbers can indeed be used to understand their dynamics inside stars.