Viscorotational shear instability of Keplerian granular flows.

The linear stability of viscous Keplerian flow around a gravitating center is studied using the rheological granular fluid model. The linear rheological instability triggered by the interplay of the shear rheology and Keplerian differential rotation of incompressible dense granular fluids is found. Instability sets in in granular fluids, where the viscosity parameter grows faster than the square of the local shear rate (strain rate) at constant pressure. Found instability can play a crucial role in the dynamics of dense planetary rings and granular flows in protoplanetary disks.

Nonhelical inverse transfer of a decaying turbulent magnetic field.

In the presence of magnetic helicity, inverse transfer from small to large scales is well known in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence and has applications in astrophysics, cosmology, and fusion plasmas. Using high resolution direct numerical simulations of magnetically dominated self-similarly decaying MHD turbulence, we report a similar inverse transfer even in the absence of magnetic helicity. We compute for the first time spectral energy transfer rates to show that this inverse transfer is about half as strong as with helicity, but in both cases the magnetic gain at large scales results from velocity at similar scales interacting with smaller-scale magnetic fields. This suggests that both inverse transfers are a consequence of universal mechanisms for magnetically dominated turbulence. Possible explanations include inverse cascading of the mean squared vector potential associated with local near two dimensionality and the shallower k^{2} subinertial range spectrum of kinetic energy forcing the magnetic field with a k^{4} subinertial range to attain larger-scale coherence. The inertial range shows a clear k^{-2} spectrum and is the first example of fully isotropic magnetically dominated MHD turbulence exhibiting weak turbulence scaling.