Issue |
A&A
Volume 678, October 2023
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A57 | |
Number of page(s) | 16 | |
Section | Astrophysical processes | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202140637 | |
Published online | 04 October 2023 |
Magnetically threaded accretion disks in resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations and asymptotic expansion
1
Research Centre for Computational Physics and Data Processing, Institute of Physics, Silesian University in Opava, Bezručovo nám. 13, 746 01 Opava, Czech Republic
2
Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences, Bartycka 18, 00-716 Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: miki@camk.edu.pl
3
Academia Sinica, Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, PO Box 23-141 Taipei 106, Taiwan
4
Höchstleistungsrechenzentrum Stuttgart, Nobelstraße 19, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany
Received:
22
February
2021
Accepted:
16
August
2023
Aims. A realistic model of magnetic linkage between a central object and its accretion disk is a prerequisite for understanding the spin history of stars and stellar remnants. To this end, we aim to provide an analytic model in agreement with magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations.
Methods. For the first time, we wrote a full set of stationary asymptotic expansion equations of a thin magnetic accretion disk, including the induction and energy equations. We also performed a resistive MHD simulation of an accretion disk around a star endowed with a magnetic dipole, using the publicly available code PLUTO. We compared the analytical results with the numerical solutions, and discussed the results in the context of previous solutions of the induction equation describing the star-disk magnetospheric interaction.
Results. We found that the magnetic field threading the disk is suppressed by orders of magnitude inside thin disks, so the presence of the stellar magnetic field does not strongly affect the velocity field, nor the density profile inside the disk. Density and velocity fields found in the MHD simulations match the radial and vertical profiles of the analytic solution. Qualitatively, the MHD simulations result in an internal magnetic field similar to the solutions previously obtained by solving the induction equation in the disk alone. However, the magnetic field configuration is quantitatively affected by magnetic field inflation outside the disk; this is reflected in the net torque. The torque on the star is an order of magnitude larger in the magnetic than in the non-magnetic case. Spin-up of the star occurs on a timescale comparable to the accretion timescale in the MHD case, and is an order of magnitude slower in the absence of a stellar magnetic field.
Key words: accretion / accretion disks / magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) / methods: analytical / methods: numerical / stars: neutron / X-rays: binaries
© The Authors 2023
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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