Jeans criterion in hydrostatic stratified media

Abstract

The classical Jeans stability criterion neglects spatial gradients in background physical quantities such as density and pressure. Here, we revisit the Jeans analysis for a non-rotating fluid in hydrostatic equilibrium, explicitly accounting for these gradients and deriving a modified dispersion relation governing perturbation propagation. Using physical arguments, we show why the Jeans swindle is not required to derive the Jeans criterion for perturbations that are small compared to the size of the host system. We use linear perturbation analysis alongside an averaging procedure to study the behavior of the local Eulerian perturbations in a hydrostatic medium, showing that background gradients enter the dispersion relation in a highly non-trivial manner, precluding the derivation of a general gravitational stability criterion applicable to an arbitrary hydrostatic system. We demonstrate that, in the local short-wavelength limit, the standard Jeans criterion remains valid despite the presence of nonzero background gradients, and that all local perturbations in a hydrostatic system are stable against local gravitational collapse. We conclude that it is not possible to derive a general local gravitational stability criterion valid for an arbitrary hydrostatic background; however, in the local short-wavelength limit, the standard Jeans criterion remains valid.