The Response of Rotating Stellar Convection to Latitudinally Varying Heat Flux

Abstract We investigate how rotating convection responds to the imposition of a latitudinally varying heat flux at the base of the convective layer. This study is motivated by the solar near-surface shear layer, whose flows are thought to transition from a buoyancy-dominated regime near the photosphere to a rotation-dominated regime at depth. Here, we conduct a suite of spherical 3D, nonlinear simulations of rotating convection that operate in either the buoyancy-dominated (high-Rossby-number, high-Ro) or rotation-dominated (low-Rossby-number, low-Ro) regime. At the base of each model convection zone, we impose a heat flux whose latitudinal variation is opposite to the variation that the system would ordinarily develop. In both the low- and high-Ro regimes, a strong thermal wind balance is sustained in the absence of forcing. With a larger flux variation, this balance becomes stronger at high latitudes and weaker at low latitudes. The resulting differential rotation weakens in response, and at sufficiently high forcing, its latitudinal variation reverses for both low- and high-Ro systems. At fixed forcing, there exists a Rossby number above which the convective flows efficiently mix heat laterally, and the imposed flux variation does not imprint to the surface. At sufficiently high Ro, thermal wind balance is no longer satisfied. We discuss these results within the context of the Sun’s near-surface region, which possesses a weakened differential rotation when compared to the deep convection, along with little-to-no variation of photospheric emissivity in latitude.