TRANSPORT OF ANGULAR-MOMENTUM AND DIFFUSION BY THE ACTION OF INTERNAL WAVES

A number of difficulties concerning the transport of angular momentum and the transport of chemical contaminants (lithium) by turbulent mixing, leads to the idea of solving the problem by introducing another agent: internal waves generated by the turbulent motion of the convective zone. Recent work on the subject provides the elements for a new. We consider in Sect. 2 the transfer of angular momentum and show that the process is very efficient and can explain the quasi solid body rotation of the internal radiative zone of the Sun. It provides the correct sign to the gradient of angular velocity. It fits the observed value of the discontinuity of the circular frequency at the boundary of the convective zone. We show in Sect. 3 that diffusion generated by irreversible second order motions can very likely explain the characteristics of lithium depletion in stars. If the luminosity of internal waves is sufficiently large, the flow of internal waves can generate a super-adiabatic gradient close to the stellar center. As the efficiency of filtering of internal waves by magnetic field at the bottom of the convective zone depends on the intensity of the magnetic field, a correlation is expected with of the phase of the solar cycle and this opens the way to an explanation of a neutrino flux variability