• Featured in Physics
  • Editors' Suggestion

Shallow Water Analogue of the Standing Accretion Shock Instability: Experimental Demonstration and a Two-Dimensional Model

Thierry Foglizzo, Frédéric Masset, Jérôme Guilet, and Gilles Durand
Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 051103 – Published 30 January 2012
Physics logo See Viewpoint: Seeing Stellar Explosions with Shallow Water
PDFHTMLExport Citation

Abstract

Despite the sphericity of the collapsing stellar core, the birth conditions of neutron stars can be highly nonspherical due to a hydrodynamical instability of the shocked accretion flow. Here we report the first laboratory experiment of a shallow water analogue, based on the physics of hydraulic jumps. Both the experiment and its shallow water modeling demonstrate a robust linear instability and nonlinear properties of symmetry breaking, in a system which is one million times smaller and about one hundred times slower than its astrophysical analogue.

  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Received 4 November 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.051103

© 2012 American Physical Society

Viewpoint

Key Image

Seeing Stellar Explosions with Shallow Water

Published 30 January 2012

Observation of shallow water motion provides a remarkably good way to simulate the shock wave instabilities that occur in exploding stars.

See more in Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Thierry Foglizzo1, Frédéric Masset2,1, Jérôme Guilet3,1, and Gilles Durand1

  • 1Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay, CEA/Irfu Université Paris-Diderot CNRS/INSU, F-91191 Gif sur Yvette, France
  • 2ICF, UNAM, Cuernavaca, Morelos, 62210, Mexico
  • 3DAMTP, University of Cambridge, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge CB3 0WA, United Kingdom

Article Text (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand

Supplemental Material (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand

References (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand
Issue

Vol. 108, Iss. 5 — 3 February 2012

Reuse & Permissions
Access Options
Author publication services for translation and copyediting assistance advertisement

Authorization Required


×
×

Images

×

Sign up to receive regular email alerts from Physical Review Letters

Log In

Cancel
×

Search


Article Lookup

Paste a citation or DOI

Enter a citation
×