Excitation of Turbulence in Protoplanetary Disks around Binary Stars

Abstract

Accretion disks around young binary stars are subject to strong forces exerted by the system components. Gas–dynamical interactions excite strong non-linear perturbations in the disk, which can give rise to turbulence. This study considers a mechanism for the excitation of turbulence based on the instability of non-linear waves in a rotating flow. It is shown that the spectrum of non-linear perturbations excited in the inner part of the disk leads to turbularization of the flow. Estimates of the Shakura–Syunyaev index, α ∼ 0.01−0.05, are obtained for use in numerical models of accretion disks.