Abstract
dc:description.abstractIn this dissertation I have argued that the study of stars and gaseous planets has relied too heavily on simplifying assumptions. In particular, I have demonstrated that the assumptions of spherical symmetry, thermal equilibrium, dynamical equilibrium and turbulent anisotropy all hide interesting phenomena which make a true difference to the structure and evolution of these bodies. To begin I developed new theoretical tools for probing these phenomena, starting with a new model of turbulent motion which accounts for many different sources of anisotropy. Building on this I studied rotating convection zones and determined scaling relations for the magnitude of differential rotation. In slowly-rotating systems the differential rotation is characterised by a power law with exponent of order unity, while in rapidly-rotating systems this exponent is strongly suppressed by the rotation. This provides a full characterisation of the magnitude of differential rotation in gaseous convection zones, and is in reasonable agreement with a wide array of simulations and observations. I then focused on the convection zones of rotating massive stars and found them to exhibit significantly anisotropic heat fluxes. This results in significant deviations from spherical symmetry and ultimately in qualitatively enhanced circulation currents in their envelopes. Accordingly, these stars ought to live much longer and have a different surface temperature. This potentially resolves several outstanding questions such as the anomalously slow evolution of stars on the giant branch, the dispersion in the observed properties of giant stars and the difficulty stellar modelling has to form massive binary black holes. In the same vein I examined the convection zones of bloated hot Jupiters and discovered a novel feedback mechanism between non-equilibrium tidal dissipation and the thermal structure of their upper envelopes. This mechanism stabilises shallow radiative zones against the convective instability, which would otherwise take over early on in the planet's formation as it proceeds to thermal equilibrium. Hence tidal dissipation is dramatically enhanced, which serves to inject significant quantities of heat into the upper layers of the planet and causes it to inflate. This mechanism can explain most of the observed population of inflated planets. Finally, I studied material mixing in the outer layers of accreting stars and developed a method for relating the observed surface chemistry to the bulk and accreting chemistries. This enables the direct inference of properties of circumstellar material and accretion rates for a wide variety of systems.
Degree
thesis:*- Name dc:type.qualificationname
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
- Doctoral
- Grantor dc:publisher.institution
- University of Cambridge
- Year dc:date.issued
- 2018
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Jermyn, Adam Sean
- Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
-
- Tout, Christopher Adam
Subjects
dc:subject × 6Rights
dc:rightsIdentifiers
dc:identifier.*- DOI dc:identifier.doi
- https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.25347
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/278021