Axisymmetric dusty gas jet in the inner coma of a comet: II. The case of isolated jets

The behavior of isolated pure and dusty gas jets ejected from an active spot on the sunlit side of the nucleus surface is hydrodynamically investigated in the inner coma of an H₂O-dominated comet that is assumed to have no ambient ejection of the gas and dust from the dust-covered surface except the active spot. Steady-state solutions of the expanding jets are obtained by numerically solving the axisymmetric, time-dependent, coupled hydrodynamic equations of H₂O gas and the dust in polar coordinates (r, θ, φ). The dust particles are treated as multicomponents composed of the three radii of a = 0.01, 0.1, and 1 μm. The boundary conditions of a slip wall are applied to the dust-covered surface. Discussion is given on the no-slip-wall conditions. Compared with the previous study on the jets surrounded by ambient gas and dust ejected from a nonactive region by Y. Kitamura (1986, Icarus 66, 241–257), the jet features can be clearly discerned even at large distances from the nucleus center, and the shift of the density peaks from the central axis to the wings, which was seen in the previous study, does not occur, because the jets can freely expand in the θ direction without being decelerated by the ambient gas and dust. The gas flow in the θ direction is supersonic, and consequently it is predicted that the shock waves are formed in the interactive regions among several jets. For the isolated jets with no ambient ejection, it is to be noted that the flow of the gas and dust along the nucleus surface arises in spite of the radial ejection from the active spot, and that this flow may change the surface structure. In the dusty case, the gas temperature increases immediately from 200 to ∼275°K in the vicinity of the surface owing to strong heating by the fine dust particles with the radius as small as 0.01 μm. In addition to the fine dust, the hot dust mantle (300–400°K) on the surface may considerably heat the gas near the mantle.