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Stéphane Mathis

Publications and source records attributed to Stéphane Mathis.

105 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

2D dynamics of the radiation zone of low mass stars

The internal rotation of low mass stars all along their evolution is of primary interest when studying their rotational dynamics, internal mixing and magnetic fields generation. In this context, helio- and asteroseismology probe angular velocity gradients deep within solar type stars. Still the rotation of the close center of such stars on the main sequence is hardly detectable and the dynamical interactions of the radiative core with the surface convective envelope is not well understood. Among them, the influence of the differential rotation profile sustained by convection and applied as a boundary condition to the radiation zone may be very important leading to the formation of tachoclines. In the solar convective region, the equator is rotating faster than the pole while numerical simulations predict either a solar or an anti-solar rotation in other low mass stars envelopes depending on their convective Rossby number. In this work, we therefore build for the first time 2D steady hydrodynamical models of low mass stars radiation zone providing a full 2D description of their dynamics and studying the influence of a general shear boundary condition accounting for a solar or an anti-solar differential rotation in the convective envelope. We compute coherently differential rotation and the associated meridional circulation using the Boussinesq approximation.

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The impact of rotation on turbulent tidal friction in stellar and planetary convective regions

Turbulent friction in convective regions in stars and planets is one of the key physical mechanisms that drive the dissipation of the kinetic energy of tidal flows in their interiors and the evolution of their systems. This friction acts both on the equilibrium/non-wave like tide and on tidal inertial waves in these layers. It is thus necessary to obtain a robust prescription for this friction. In the current state-of-the-art, it is modeled by a turbulent eddy-viscosity coefficient, based on mixing-length theory, applied on velocities of tides. However, none of the current prescriptions take into account the action of rotation that can strongly affects turbulent convection. Therefore, we use theoretical scaling laws for convective velocities and characteristic lengthscales in rotating stars and planets that have been recently confirmed by 3-D high-resolution nonlinear Cartesian numerical simulations to derive a new prescription. A corresponding local model of tidal waves is used to understand the consequences for the linear tidal dissipation. Finally, new grids of rotating stellar models and published values of planetary convective Rossby numbers are used to discuss astrophysical consequences. The action of rotation on convection deeply modifies the turbulent friction applied on tides. In the regime of rapid rotation (with a convective Rossby number below 0.25), the eddy-viscosity may be decreased by several ordres of magnitude. It may lead to a loss of efficiency of the viscous dissipation of the equilibrium tide and to a more efficient complex and resonant dissipation of tidal inertial waves in the bulk of convective regions. Therefore, it is necessary to have a completely coupled treatment of the tidal/rotational evolution of star-planet systems and multiple stars with a coherent treatment of the variations of tidal flows and of their dissipation as a function of rotation.

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Effect of the rotation and tidal dissipation history of stars on the evolution of close-in planets

Since twenty years, a large population of close-in planets orbiting various classes of low-mass stars (from M to A-type stars) has been discovered. In such systems, the dissipation of the kinetic energy of tidal flows in the host star may modify its rotational evolution and shape the orbital architecture of the surrounding planetary system. In this context, recent works demonstrated that the amplitude of this dissipation can vary over several orders of magnitude as a function of stellar mass, age and rotation. In addition, the stellar rotation evolution strongly impacts angular momentum exchanges within star-planet systems. Therefore, it is now necessary to take into account the structural and rotational evolution of stars when studying the orbital evolution of close-in planets. The presence of planets may also modify the rotation of the host stars and as a consequence their evolution, magnetic activity and mixing. In this work, we present the first study of the dynamics of close-in planets of various masses orbiting low-mass stars (from $0.6$ to $1.2~M_\star$) where we compute the simultaneous evolution of the star's structure, rotation and tidal dissipation in its external convective enveloppe. We find that tidal friction due to the stellar dynamical tide, i.e. tidal inertial waves excited in the convection zone, can be larger by several orders of magnitude than the one of the equilibrium tide, especially during the PMS phase. Consequently, the orbital migration of the planet is now more pronounced and depends more on the stellar mass, rotation and age. This would very weakly affect the planets in the habitable zone because they are located at orbital distances such that stellar tide-induced migration happens on very long timescales. We also demonstrate that the rotational evolution of host stars is only weakly affected by the presence of planets except for massive companions.

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New constraints on Saturn's interior from Cassini astrometric data

Using astrometric observations spanning more than a century and including a large set of Cassini data, we determine Saturn's tidal parameters through their current effects on the orbits of the eight main and four coorbital moons. We have used the latter to make the first determination of Saturn's Love number, $k_2=0.390 \pm 0.024$, a value larger than the commonly used theoretical value of 0.341 (Gavrilov & Zharkov, 1977), but compatible with more recent models (Helled & Guillot, 2013) for which $k_2$ ranges from 0.355 to 0.382. Depending on the assumed spin for Saturn's interior, the new constraint can lead to a reduction of up to 80% in the number of potential models, offering great opportunities to probe the planet's interior. In addition, significant tidal dissipation within Saturn is confirmed (Lainey et al., 2012) corresponding to a high present-day tidal ratio $k_2/Q=(1.59 \pm 0.74) \times 10^{-4}$ and implying fast orbital expansions of the moons. This high dissipation, with no obvious variations for tidal frequencies corresponding to those of Enceladus and Dione, may be explained by viscous friction in a solid core, implying a core viscosity typically ranging between $10^{14}$ and $10^{16}$ Pa.s (Remus et al., 2012). However, a dissipation increase by one order of magnitude at Rhea's frequency could suggest the existence of an additional, frequency-dependent, dissipation process, possibly from turbulent friction acting on tidal waves in the fluid envelope of Saturn (Ogilvie & Li, 2004). Alternatively, a few of Saturn's moons might themselves experience large tidal dissipation.

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Scaling laws to quantify tidal dissipation in star-planet systems

Planetary systems evolve over secular time scales. One of the key mechanisms that drive this evolution is tidal dissipation. Submitted to tides, stellar and planetary fluid layers do not behave like rocky ones. Indeed, they are the place of resonant gravito-inertial waves. Therefore, tidal dissipation in fluid bodies strongly depends on the excitation frequency while this dependence is smooth in solid ones. Thus, the impact of the internal structure of celestial bodies must be taken into account when studying tidal dynamics. The purpose of this work is to present a local model of tidal gravito-inertial waves allowing us to quantify analytically the internal dissipation due to viscous friction and thermal diffusion, and to study the properties of the resonant frequency spectrum of the dissipated energy. We derive from this model scaling laws characterizing tidal dissipation as a function of fluid parameters (rotation, stratification, diffusivities) and discuss them in the context of star-planet systems.

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Impact of rotation on the geometrical configurations of fossil magnetic fields

The MiMeS project demonstrated that a small fraction of massive stars (around 7%) presents large-scale, stable, generally dipolar magnetic fields at their surface. They are supposed to be fossil remnants of initial phases of stellar evolution. In fact, they result from the relaxation to MHD equilibrium states during the formation of stable radiation zones of initial fields generated by a previous convective phase. In contrast with the case of magnetic fields built by dynamo mechanisms, the geometry of fossil fields at the surface of early-type stars seems to be independent of rotation: dipolar fields are observed both in slowly- and rapidly-rotating stars. In this work, we present new theoretical results, where we generalized previous studies by taking rotation into account. The properties of relaxed fossil fields are compared to those obtained when rotation is ignored. Consequences for magnetic fields in the radiative envelope of rotating early-type stars are discussed.

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Asteroseismology and spectropolarimetry: opening new windows on the internal dynamics of massive stars

In this article, we show how asteroseismology and spectropolarimetry allow to probe dynamical processes in massive star interiors. First, we give a summary of the state-of-the-art. Second, we recall the MHD mechanisms that take place in massive stars. Next, we show how asteroseimology gives strong constraints on the internal mixing and transport of angular momentum while spectropolarimetry allows to unravel the role played by magnetic fields.

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Stochastic excitation of gravity waves in rapidly rotating massive stars

Stochastic gravity waves have been recently detected and characterised in stars thanks to space asteroseismology and they may play an important role in the evolution of stellar angular momentum. In this context, the observational study of the CoRoT hot Be star HD 51452 suggests a potentially strong impact of rotation on stochastic excitation of gravito-inertial waves in rapidly rotating stars. In this work, we present our results on the action of the Coriolis acceleration on stochastic wave excitation by turbulent convection. We study the change of efficiency of this mechanism as a function of the waves' Rossby number and we demonstrate that the excitation presents two different regimes for super-inertial and sub-inertial frequencies. Consequences for rapidly rotating early-type stars and the transport of angular momentum in their interiors are discussed.

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Combining seismology and spectropolarimetry of hot stars

Asteroseismology and spectropolarimetry have allowed us to progress significantly in our understanding of the physics of hot stars over the last decade. It is now possible to combine these two techniques to learn even more information about hot stars and constrain their models. While only a few magnetic pulsating hot stars are known as of today and have been studied with both seismology and spectropolarimetry, new opportunities - in particular Kepler2 and BRITE - are emerging and will allow us to rapidly obtain new combined results.

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Unravelling tidal dissipation in gaseous giant planets

Tidal dissipation in planetary interiors is one of the key physical mechanisms that drive the evolution of star-planet and planet-moon systems. New constraints are now obtained both in the Solar and exoplanetary systems. Tidal dissipation in planets is intrinsically related to their internal structure. In particular, fluid and solid layers behave differently under tidal forcing. Therefore, their respective dissipation reservoirs have to be compared. In this letter, we compute separately the contributions of the potential dense rocky/icy core and the convective fluid envelope of gaseous giant planets, as a function of core size and mass. We then compare the associated dissipation reservoirs, by evaluating the frequency-average of the imaginary part of the Love numbers $k^2_2$ in each region. In the case of Jupiter and Saturn-like planets, we show that the viscoelastic dissipation in the core could dominate the turbulent friction acting on tidal inertial waves in the envelope. However, the fluid dissipation would not be negligible. This demonstrates that it is necessary to build complete models of tidal dissipation in planetary interiors from their deep interior to their surface without any arbitrary a-priori.

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Angular momentum transport by stochastically excited oscillations in rapidly rotating massive stars

We estimate the amount of angular momentum transferred by the low-frequency oscillations detected in the rapidly rotating hot Be star HD 51452. Here, we assume that the oscillations detected are stochastically excited by convective motions in the convective core of the star, that is, we treat the oscillations as forced oscillations excited by the periodic convective motions of the core fluids having the frequencies observationally determined. With the observational amplitudes of the photometric variations, we determine the oscillation amplitudes, which makes it possible to estimate the net amount of angular momentum transferred by the oscillations using the wave-meanflow interaction theory. Since we do not have any information concerning the azimuthal wavenumber $m$ and spherical harmonic degree $l$ for each of the oscillations, we assume that all the frequencies detected are prograde or retrograde in the observer's frame and they are all associated with a single value of $m$ both for even modes ($l=|m|$) and for odd modes ($l=|m|+1$). We estimate the amount of angular momentum transferred by the oscillations for $|m|=1$ and 2, which are typical $|m|$ values for Be stars, and find that the amount is large enough for a decretion disc to form around the star. Therefore, transport of angular momentum by waves stochastically excited in the core of Be stars might be responsible for the Be phenomenon.

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Theoretical seismology in 3D : nonlinear simulations of internal gravity waves in solar-like stars

Internal gravity waves (hereafter IGWs) are studied for their impact on the angular momentum transport in stellar radiation zones and the information they provide about the structure and dynamics of deep stellar interiors. We here present the first 3D nonlinear numerical simulations of IGWs excitation and propagation in a solar-like star. The aim is to study the behavior of waves in a realistic 3D nonlinear time dependent model of the Sun and to characterize their properties. We compare our results with theoretical and 1D predictions. It allows us to point out the complementarity between theory and simulation and to highlight the convenience but also the limits of the asymptotic and linear theories. We show that a rich spectrum of IGWs is excited by the convection, representing about 0.4% of the total solar luminosity. We study the spatial and temporal properties of this spectrum, the effect of thermal damping and nonlinear interactions between waves. We give quantitative results about the modes frequencies, evolution with time and rotational splitting and we discuss the amplitude of IGWs considering different regimes of parameters. This work points out the importance of high performance simulation for its complementarity with observation and theory. It opens a large field of investigation concerning IGWs propagating nonlinearly in 3D spherical structures. The extension of this work to other types of stars, with different masses, structures and rotation rates will lead to a deeper and more accurate comprehension of IGWs in stars.

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Impact of rotation on stochastic excitation of gravity and gravito-inertial waves in stars

Gravity waves (or their signatures) are detected in stars thanks to helio- and asteroseismology and they may play an important role in the evolution of stellar angular momentum. Moreover, the observational study of the CoRoT target HD51452 by Neiner and collaborators demonstrated the potential strong impact of rotation on the stochastic excitation of gravito-inertial waves in stellar interiors. Our goal is to explore the action of rotation on the stochastic excitation of gravity and gravito-inertial waves in stars. The dynamics of gravito-inertial waves in stellar interiors, both in radiation and in convection zones, is described with a local non-traditional f-plane model. Their couplings with convective turbulent flows is studied in this framework. First, we find that, in the super-inertial regime in which the wave frequency is over twice the rotation frequency, the evanescence of gravito-inertial waves in convective regions decreases with decreasing wave frequency. Next, in the sub-inertial regime, gravito-inertial waves become purely propagative inertial waves in convection zones. Simultaneously, turbulence in convective regions is modified by rotation. Indeed, the turbulent energy cascade towards small scales is slowed down and in the case of rapid rotation, strongly anisotropic turbulent flows are obtained that can be understood as complex non-linear triadic interactions of propagative inertial waves. These different behaviours, due to the action of the Coriolis acceleration, strongly modify the wave couplings with turbulent flows. On one hand, turbulence weakly influenced by rotation is coupled with evanescent gravito-inertial waves. On the other hand, rapidly rotating turbulence is intrinsically and strongly coupled with sub-inertial waves.

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Seismic constraints on rotation of Sun-like star and mass of exoplanet

Rotation is thought to drive cyclic magnetic activity in the Sun and Sun-like stars. Stellar dynamos, however, are poorly understood owing to the scarcity of observations of rotation and magnetic fields in stars. Here, inferences are drawn on the internal rotation of a distant Sun-like star by studying its global modes of oscillation. We report asteroseismic constraints imposed on the rotation rate and the inclination of the spin axis of the Sun-like star HD 52265, a principal target observed by the CoRoT satellite that is known to host a planetary companion. These seismic inferences are remarkably consistent with an independent spectroscopic observation (rotational line broadening) and with the observed rotation period of star spots. Furthermore, asteroseismology constrains the mass of exoplanet HD 52265b. Under the standard assumption that the stellar spin axis and the axis of the planetary orbit coincide, the minimum spectroscopic mass of the planet can be converted into a true mass of 1.85 (+0.52,-0.42) M_Jupiter, which implies that it is a planet, not a brown dwarf.

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Effect of a fossil magnetic field on the structure of a young Sun

We study the impact of a fossil magnetic field on the physical quantities which describe the structure of a young Sun of 500 Myr. We consider for the first time a non force-free field composed of a mixture of poloidal and toroidal magnetic fields and we propose a specific configuration to illustrate our purpose. In the present paper, we estimate the relative role of the different terms which appear in the modified stellar structure equations. We note that the Lorentz tension plays a non negligible role in addition to the magnetic pressure. This is interesting because most of the previous stellar evolution codes ignored that term and the geometry of the field. The solar structure perturbations are, as already known, small and consequently we have been able to estimate each term semi-analytically. We develop a general treatment to calculate the global modification of the structure and of the energetic balance. We estimate also the gravitational multipolar moments associated with the presence of a fossil large-scale magnetic field in radiative zone. The values given for the young Sun help the future implementation in stellar evolution codes. This work can be repeated for any other field configuration and prepares the achievement of a solar MHD model where we will follow the transport of such field on secular timescales and the associated transport of momentum and chemicals. The described method will be applied at the present Sun and the results will be compared with the coming balloon or space measurements.

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