r-mode Movies
Lindblom, Vallisneri, and Tohline

The following two figures and their accompanying quicktime movies (click on the image to download its corresponding movie) display results from the first extended test run that we made using a very slowing rotating star. The initial model was a uniformly rotating, n = 1 polytrope with a ratio of rotational to gravitational potential energy, T/|W| = 0.004. On the left is the "control" run in which the velocity field of the star was initially perturbed with eigenfunction of a pure r-mode, but no driving forces were employed thereafter. On the right is the comparison model that started with the same, low-amplitude initial perturbation, but thereafter it was driven by radiation-reaction forces.

The information that is plotted in each figure (movie) is detailed below.

SLOW ( T/|W| = 0.004 )
Updated 09 September 2000
Free Forced2
1.251 MB 1.682 MB

Each frame of these two movies contains two plots. On the left-hand-side is a color contour plot of the azimuthally averaged angular velocity (omega_avg) throughout the (R,Z) meridional plane. More specifically, we have calculated the following quantity,

amplitude = log10[abs(omega_avg) + 10-7],

then selected a "rainbow" color scheme of the form,

black purple blue green yellow orange red
smallest amplitude largest amplitude

On the right-hand-side of each frame we have plotted amplitude versus radius in the equatorial plane of the star. Although this plot does not (yet) contain a vertical label, you can still get a pretty good idea of what is going on by realizing that the vertical scale goes from amplitude = -7 (bottom) to amplitude = +0.5 (top).

The integer at the top of each frame identifies the frame number. Frame 1000 corresponds to the initial model; thereafter, successive frames are separated by 1/600th of a rotation period.