Resonant drag instabilities for polydisperse dust

Abstract

Context. Dust grains embedded in a gas flow give rise to a class of hydrodynamic instabilities that can occur whenever there exists a relative velocity between gas and dust. These instabilities have predominantly been studied for single grain sizes, for which a strong interaction can be found between drifting dust and a travelling gas wave leading to fast-growing perturbations (growth rates ∝√μ) even at small dust-to-gas ratios μ. They are called resonant drag instabilities. We focus on the acoustic resonant drag instability, which is potentially important in AGB star outflows, around supernova remnants, and star clusters in starburst galaxies. Aims. We study the acoustic resonant drag instability, taking into account a continuous spectrum of grain sizes, to determine whether it survives in the polydisperse regime and how the resulting growth rates compare to the monodisperse case. Methods. We solved the linear equations for a polydisperse fluid for the acoustic drag instability, focusing on small dust-to-gas ratios. Results. Size distributions that have a realistic width turn the fast-growing perturbations ∝√μ of the monodisperse limit into slower growing perturbations ∝ μ due to the fact that the backreaction on the gas involves an integration over the resonance. Furthermore, the large wave numbers that grow fastest in the monodisperse regime are stabilised by a size distribution, severely limiting the growth rates in the polydisperse regime. Conclusions. The acoustic resonant drag instability turns from a singularly perturbed problem in μ in the monodisperse limit into a regular perturbation for a sufficiently wide size distribution. It can still grow exponentially in the polydisperse regime, but at a slower pace compared to the single size case.