Issue |
A&A
Volume 516, June-July 2010
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A26 | |
Number of page(s) | 10 | |
Section | Numerical methods and codes | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/200912443 | |
Published online | 22 June 2010 |
High-order Godunov schemes for global 3D MHD simulations of accretion disks
I. Testing the linear growth of the magneto-rotational instability
1
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17,
69117 Heidelberg, Germany e-mail: flock@mpia.de
2
Dipartimento di Fisica Generale, Universitá degli Studi di
Torino, via Pietro Giuria 1, 10125 Torino, Italy
Received:
7
May
2009
Accepted:
16
April
2010
We assess the suitability of various numerical MHD algorithms for astrophysical accretion disk simulations with the PLUTO code. The well-studied linear growth of the magneto-rotational instability is used as the benchmark test for a comparison between the implementations within PLUTO and against the ZeusMP code. The results demonstrate the importance of using an upwind reconstruction of the electro-motive force (EMF) in the context of a constrained transport scheme, which is consistent with plane-parallel, grid-aligned flows. In contrast, constructing the EMF from the simple average of the Godunov fluxes leads to a numerical instability and the unphysical growth of the magnetic energy. We compare the results from 3D global calculations using different MHD methods against the analytical solution for the linear growth of the MRI, and discuss the effect of numerical dissipation. The comparison identifies a robust and accurate code configuration that is vital for realistic modeling of accretion disk processes.
Key words: accretion, accretion disks / magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) / methods: numerical
© ESO, 2010
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