Completeness of inertial modes of an incompressible inviscid fluid in a corotating ellipsoid.

Inertial modes are the eigenmodes of contained rotating fluids restored by the Coriolis force. When the fluid is incompressible, inviscid, and contained in a rigid container, these modes satisfy Poincaré's equation that has the peculiarity of being hyperbolic with boundary conditions. Inertial modes are, therefore, solutions of an ill-posed boundary-value problem. In this paper, we investigate the mathematical side of this problem. We first show that the Poincaré problem can be formulated in the Hilbert space of square-integrable functions, with no hypothesis on the continuity or the differentiability of velocity fields. We observe that with this formulation, the Poincaré operator is bounded and self-adjoint, and as such, its spectrum is the union of the point spectrum (the set of eigenvalues) and the continuous spectrum only. When the fluid volume is an ellipsoid, we show that the inertial modes form a complete base of polynomial velocity fields for the square-integrable velocity fields defined over the ellipsoid and meeting the boundary conditions. If the ellipsoid is axisymmetric, then the base can be identified with the set of Poincaré modes, first obtained by Bryan [Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London 180, 187 (1889)PTRMAD1364-503X10.1098/rsta.1889.0006], and completed with the geostrophic modes.

Excitation of inertial modes in an experimental spherical Couette flow.

Spherical Couette flow (flow between concentric rotating spheres) is one of flows under consideration for the laboratory magnetic dynamos. Recent experiments have shown that such flows may excite Coriolis restored inertial modes. The present work aims to better understand the properties of the observed modes and the nature of their excitation. Using numerical solutions describing forced inertial modes of a uniformly rotating fluid inside a spherical shell, we first identify the observed oscillations of the Couette flow with nonaxisymmetric, retrograde, equatorially antisymmetric inertial modes, confirming first attempts using a full sphere model. Although the model has no differential rotation, identification is possible because a large fraction of the fluid in a spherical Couette flow rotates rigidly. From the observed sequence of the excited modes appearing when the inner sphere is slowed down by step, we identify a critical Rossby number associated with a given mode, below which it is excited. The matching between this critical number and the one derived from the phase velocity of the numerically computed modes shows that these modes are excited by an instability likely driven by the critical layer that develops in the shear layer, staying along the tangent cylinder of the inner sphere.

CoRoT measures solar-like oscillations and granulation in stars hotter than the Sun.

Oscillations of the Sun have been used to understand its interior structure. The extension of similar studies to more distant stars has raised many difficulties despite the strong efforts of the international community over the past decades. The CoRoT (Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits) satellite, launched in December 2006, has now measured oscillations and the stellar granulation signature in three main sequence stars that are noticeably hotter than the sun. The oscillation amplitudes are about 1.5 times as large as those in the Sun; the stellar granulation is up to three times as high. The stellar amplitudes are about 25% below the theoretic values, providing a measurement of the nonadiabaticity of the process ruling the oscillations in the outer layers of the stars.