INSTABILITY AND VERTICAL ECCENTRICITY VARIATION IN GLOBAL HYDRODYNAMIC DISK SIMULATIONS

Many dynamical interactions can induce eccentricities in astrophysical accretion disks. Disk eccentricities in turn seed a variety of instabilities, even in ideal hydrodynamics. We use 3D nonlinear simulations and 2 + 1D linear calculations to characterize local and global instabilities in strongly distorted disks. On local scales, our simulations show the growth of parametrically excited inertial waves, which drive wave turbulence. The inertial waves’ growth rates and localizations agree with the predictions of local theory. On global scales, we observe the growth of a separate family of low-frequency, vertically structured modes that compare favorably with eigenmodes computed from the linear theory of an eccentric background state. These low-frequency modes interact nonlinearly with the inertial wave turbulence driven by parametric instability, and they induce variation in eccentricity profiles that are initially uniform in the vertical direction. Extrapolating from our vertically local framework, we postulate that these secondary distortions may correspond to the corrugation of an initially planar eccentric disk. Our simulations demonstrate that strong disk eccentricities drive numerous dynamical phenomena even in a purely hydrodynamic, Newtonian framework.