The stress-pressure lag in MRI turbulence and its implications for thermal instability in accretion discs

The classical alpha-disc model assumes that the turbulent stress scales linearly with – and responds instantaneously to – the pressure. It is likely, however, that the stress possesses a non-negligible relaxation time and will lag behind the pressure on some timescale. To measure the size of this lag we carry out unstratified 3D magnetohydrodynamic shearing box simulations with zero-net-magnetic-flux using the finite-volume code PLUTO. We impose thermal oscillations of varying periods via a cooling term, which in turn drives oscillations in the turbulent stress. Our simulations reveal that the stress oscillations lag behind the pressure by ∼ 5 orbits in cases where the oscillation period is several tens of orbits or more. We discuss the implication of our results for thermal and viscous overstability in discs around compact objects.