Abstract
This work studies the hydrodynamics of self-gravitating, compressible, isothermal fluids. We show that the hydrodynamic-evolution equations are scale covariant in the absence of viscosity. Then, we study the evolution of the time-dependent fluctuations around singular and regular isothermal spheres. We linearize the fluid equations around such stationary solutions and develop a method based on the Laplace transform to analyze their dynamical stability. We find that the system is stable below a critical size in dimensionless variables) and unstable above; this criterion is the same as the one found for the thermodynamic stability in the canonical ensemble and it is associated with a center-to-border density ratio of 32.1. We prove that the value of this critical size is independent of the Reynolds number of the system. Furthermore, we give a detailed description of the series of successive dynamic instabilities that appear at larger and larger sizes following the geometric progression Then, we search for exact solutions of the hydrodynamic equations without viscosity, we provide analytic and numerical axisymmetric soliton-type solutions. The stability of exact solutions corresponding to a collapsing filament is studied by computing linear fluctuations. Radial fluctuations growing faster than the background are found for all sizes of the system. However, a critical size appears, separating a weakly from a strongly unstable regime.
- Received 6 August 1999
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.63.084005
©2001 American Physical Society