An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
English-French-Persian

A type of instability that often occurs in fluids which are thermally stably stratified, but have an inhomogeneous composition. A well-known example, found in upper layers of the Earth's oceans, is → salt fingers. Similar fingering instabilities can occur in any other thermally stably stratified solution, provided the concentration of the slower-diffusing solute increases with height. The saturated state of this instability, → fingering convection, takes the form of tightly-packed, vertically-elongated plumes of sinking dense fluid and rising light fluid, and significantly enhances the vertical transport of both heat and chemical composition. The fingering instability occurs in stars within radiation zones that have an unstable mean → molecular weight  → gradient (μ gradient). This situation is often found as a result of material accretion onto a star by anything from a single or multiple planets, to material from a dust-enriched or debris accretion disk, or material from a more evolved companion. It also naturally arises in the vicinity of the → hydrogen shell burning in → red giant branch (RGB) stars, and in thin element-rich layers near the surface of intermediate-mass stars. The fingering instability initially takes the form of thin tubes, hence the name "finger," within which the fluid moves vertically. The tubes rapidly break down, however, as a result of parasitic shear instabilities that develop inbetween them, and the fingering instability eventually saturates into a state of homogeneous fingering convection where the typical aspect ratio of the eddies is closer to one (P. Garaud et al., 2015, arXiv:1505.07759).

→ finger; → -ing; → instability.