“Propeller” Regime of Disk Accretion to Rapidly Rotating Stars
By G. V. Ustyugova, Alexander V. Koldoba, M. Romanova, R. Lovelace. 2006
140 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We present results of axisymmetric magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the interaction of a rapidly rotating, magnetized star with an accretion disk. The disk is considered to have a finite viscosity and magnetic diffusivity. The main parameters of the system are the star's angular velocity and magnetic moment, and the disk's viscosity and diffusivity. We focus on the "propeller" regime where the inner radius of the disk is larger than the corotation radius. Two types of magnetohydrodynamic flows have been found as a result of simulations: "weak" and "strong" propellers. The strong propellers are characterized by a powerful disk wind and a collimated magnetically dominated outflow or jet from the star. The weak propellers have only weak outflows. We investigated the time-averaged characteristics of the interaction between the main elements of the system: the star, the disk, the wind from the disk, and the jet. Rates of exchange of mass and angular momentum between the elements of the system are derived as a function of the main parameters. The propeller mechanism may be responsible for the fast spinning down of the classical T Tauri stars in the initial stages of their evolution and for the spinning down of accreting millisecond pulsars.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2e8e5cc684a74b3b72b7c8eb403c4ad7c2533ad4
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
- M. Romanova
- R. Lovelace
- Alexander V. Koldoba
- G. V. Ustyugova
- J. Ferreira
- C. Zanni
- A. Kulkarni
- H. Spruit
Citations in the corpus
- MHD simulations of accretion onto a dipolar magnetosphere - II. Magnetospheric ejections and stellar spin-down (2012, background): “…radius is that, since in this region a Keplerian disk rotates slower than the star, the stellar rotation tries to increase (“propel”) thedisk angular speed in the region directly connected to the star, hence the appellative “propeller” regime (Illarionov & Sunyaev 1975; Ustyugova et al. 2006).”
- Launching of conical winds and axial jets from the disc–magnetosphere boundary: axisymmetric and 3D simulations (2009, methodology): “Axisymmetric simulations of the outflows are similar to those performed earlier for the propeller regime (e.g. Ustyugova et al. 2006, hereafter U06), but differ in initial and boundary conditions.”