Accretion to magnetized stars through the Rayleigh–Taylor instability: global 3D simulations
By A. Kulkarni, M. Romanova. 2008
159 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We present results of 3D simulations of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) instabilities at the accretion disc‐magnetosphere boundary. The instability is Rayleigh‐Taylor, and develops for a fairly broad range of accretion rates and stellar rotation rates and magnetic fields. It manifests itself in the form of tall, thin tongues of plasma that penetrate the magnetosphere in the equatorial plane. The shape and number of the tongues changes with time on the inner disc dynamical time-scale. In contrast with funnel flows, which deposit matter mainly in the polar region, the tongues deposit matter much closer to the stellar equator. The instability appears for relatively small misalignment angles, � � 30 ◦ , between the star’s rotation and magnetic axes, and is associated with higher accretion rates. The hotspots and light curves during accretion through instability are generally much more chaotic than during stable accretion. The unstable state of accretion has possible implications for quasi-periodic oscillations and intermittent pulsations from accreting systems, as well as planet migration.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a1e973ba2e9848acc797037a8d5dc0e4f4f9fe6f
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
- A. Tchekhovskoy
- M. Romanova
- J. McKinney
- Ramesh Narayan
- R. Lovelace
- Alexander V. Koldoba
- G. V. Ustyugova
- R. Stanford
Citations in the corpus
- Launching of conical winds and axial jets from the disc–magnetosphere boundary: axisymmetric and 3D simulations (2009, background): “Note that for high αv (0.3 in this case), the disc–magnetosphere boundary may exhibit the magnetic interchange instability (Kulkarni & Romanova 2008; Romanova, Kulkarni & Lovelace 2008).”
- General relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of magnetically choked accretion flows around black holes (2012, background): “…a magnetosphere, including young-stellar objects, star formation regions (Cunningham et al. 2012), and neutron stars (Mestel & Strittmatter 1967; Arons & Lea 1976, 1980; Burnard et al. 1983; Aly & Kuijpers 1990; Shu et al. 1994; Romanova et al. 2008; Kulkarni & Romanova 2008; Romanova et al. 2011).”
- Episodic accretion on to strongly magnetic stars (2010, methodology): “This instability has recently been studied using 3D numerical simulations (Kulkarni & Romanova 2008), who find numerically approximately the same criterion for stability as Spruit et al. (1995).”