Double-Diffusive Convection

Abstract

Much progress has recently been made in understanding and quantifying vertical mixing induced by double-diffusive instabilities such as fingering convection (usually called thermohaline convection) and oscillatory double-diffusive convection (a process closely related to semiconvection). This was prompted in parts by advances in supercomputing, which allow us to run Direct Numerical Simulations of these processes at parameter values approaching those relevant in stellar interiors, and in parts by recent theoretical developments in oceanography where such instabilities also occur. In this paper I summarize these recent findings, and propose new mixing parametrizations for both processes that can easily be implemented in stellar evolution codes.