A REYNOLDS EQUATION THEORY OF SOLAR DIFFERENTIAL ROTATION AND MERIDIONAL CIRCULATION,

An incompressible hydrodynamic theory of solar photospheric rotation and circulation is formulated in terms of Reynolds equations. The dynamical hypothesis of local axisymmetric turbulence is used to reduce the number of turbulent stress tensor components. Partial solution yields a circulation pattern in good agreement with experiment, predicting a node at co-latitude 50 degrees. Using the equatorial rotation velocity, 2 x 10 to the 5th power cmsec, and the surface differential to pure rotation ratio, -15, as input parameters, the circulation velocity components and the microturbulence root mean square velocities are found to be in good agreement with experiment. Furthermore, the angular momentum per unit volume along a radial direction is found to be constant. This result agrees with and lends support to the thesis, due to Biermann and Kieppenhahn, that circulation is driven by non-potential parts of the rotation velocity field. Author