Shearing box

A shearing box solves the shearing sheet equations in a finite domain with periodic azimuthal and vertical faces and a shearing-periodic boundary condition on its radial faces. It follows a small region rotating at a reference orbital frequency. The model can sustain stress and exchange energy with its imposed differential rotation, but its identified radial faces do not represent a global disk mass sink.

For zero mean velocity and magnetic field in a shearing box, the perturbation energy obeys $\dot{E}\le 2(|A|-4{\pi }^2\eta /L^2)E$ when kinematic viscosity and magnetic diffusivity agree. Bound the work of Reynolds stress and Maxwell stress tensor by $2|A|E$, and use the spectral gap of a shearing-periodic box to bound dissipation below. Thus the displayed bound on magnetic Reynolds number guarantees exponential decay and excludes sustained turbulence.

For background velocity $-2Ax{\mathbf{e}}_y$, opposite radial faces of a shearing box are identified after the displayed azimuthal shift, modulo $L_y$. Products and spatial derivatives inherit this condition. Their radial surface integrals cancel because a translation preserves an integral over a periodic azimuthal interval.

For zero-mean fields in a shearing box, Fourier modes have wavevectors $(2\pi n/L_x+2At2\pi m/L_y,2\pi m/L_y,2\pi p/L_z)$. A nonzero azimuthal or vertical index supplies at least $2\pi /L$, where $L$ is the largest box side; otherwise the nonzero radial index does. Parseval identity gives the displayed Poincaré inequality uniformly in time.

Periodic azimuthal and vertical boundary terms vanish. Radial boundary terms cancel after the azimuthal translation prescribed by the shearing-periodic boundary condition. Consequently the volume average of a divergence is zero, enabling integration by parts for the smooth shearing-periodic fields.