On the relevance of bubbles and potential flows for stellar convection

MILLER BERTOLAMI, MARCELO M.;; VIALLET, MAXIME; PRAT, VINCENT; BARSUKOW, WASILIJ; WEISS, ACHIM

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2016 vol. 457 p. 4441 - 4453

0035-8711

Recently Pasetto et al. have proposed a new method to derive aconvection theory appropriate for the implementation in stellarevolution codes. Their approach is based on the simple physical pictureof spherical bubbles moving within a potential flow in dynamicallyunstable regions, and a detailed computation of the bubble dynamics.Based on this approach the authors derive a new theory of convectionwhich is claimed to be parameter free, non-local and time-dependent.This is a very strong claim, as such a theory is the holy grail ofstellar physics. Unfortunately we have identified several distinctproblems in the derivation which ultimately render their theoryinapplicable to any physical regime. In addition we show that theframework of spherical bubbles in potential flows is unable to capturethe essence of stellar convection, even when equations are derivedcorrectly.