Symphony of stars: The science of stellar

sound waves
Ahmane.Z

October 25, 2022

1 Introduction
When discussing sound waves (see chap3), we considered small (linear) perturbations.
In this Chapter we consider the case in which the perturbations are large (non-linear).
Typically, a large disturbance results in an abrupt discontinuity in the fluid, called a
shock. Note: not all discontinuities are shocks, but all shocks are discontinuities. On
Earth, shocks are produced, for example, by the rapid pushing of a piston into a cold gas,
or by the passage of a supersonic aircraft.

2 Shocks in astrophysics
Astrophysics abounds in shock phenomena because gravity is an effective way of acceler-
ating gas to high velocities:
for example, gas free-falling onto the surface of stars or gas orbiting in a spiral galaxy
like the Milky Way travels at hundreds of kilometres per second; in clusters of galaxies,
the free-fall speed of the gas may attain thousands of kilometres per second. Such speeds
correspond to the speed of sound in gas that is respectively at 106 K and 108 K; for gas
that is cooler than this, any relative motion between fluid elements at these sorts of speeds
must result in a shock

Bow shock at jets heads and knots along the jets. Cloud-cloud collisions
HII regions expanding into neutral medium Stellar wind encountering medium
Supernova or GRB blast wave (internal and external shocks)
Accretion onto compact objects: spherical or disk
Accretion onto hydrostatic intracluster medium

1
3 Shock types
Normal wave
Oblique wave
Curved wave

4 Mach cone

2
 vt v
sin α = = half cone of Mach (1)
vs t vs

3
5 Rankine Hugoniot jump equation
We now derive the relations between the up and down-stream quantities, under the as-
sumption that the shock is adiabatic. Consider a rectangular volume V that encloses part
of the shock, it has a thickness dx > (x2 x1 ) and is centered in the x direction on the middle
of shock. At fixed x the volume is bounded by an area A. If we ignore variations in ρ and
~v in the y and z direction

4
5
These three conditions are the Rankine?Hugoniot relations. The first is simply mass con-
servation, the second expresses the fact that a shock represents a conversion of ram pressure
to thermal pressure, and the third the conversion of kinetic energy into enthalpy. Qualita-
tively, a shock converts an ordered flow upstream into a disordered (i.e. hot) flow down-
stream. (Note however that although the Rankine? Hugoniot conditions are reversible, i.e.
would in principle allow the opposite process of a hot flow being transformed into a cold
ordered flow

6
6 Adiabattic shocks

7
8