English

Boundary Between Stable and Unstable Regimes of Accretion

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2015-06-17 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

We investigated the boundary between stable and unstable regimes of accretion and its dependence on different parameters. Simulations were performed using a "cubed sphere" code with high grid resolution (244 grid points in the azimuthal direction), which is twice as high as that used in our earlier studies. We chose a very low viscosity value, with alpha-parameter alpha=0.02. We observed from the simulations that the boundary strongly depends on the ratio between magnetospheric radius r_m (where the magnetic stress in the magnetosphere matches the matter stress in the disk) and corotation radius r_cor (where the Keplerian velocity in the disk is equal to the angular velocity of the star). For a small misalignment angle of the dipole field, Theta=5 degrees, accretion is unstable if r_cor/r_m>1.35, and is stable otherwise. In cases of a larger misalignment angle of the dipole, Theta=20 degrees, instability occurs at slightly larger values, r_cor/r_m>1.41.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1309.4363,
  title  = {Boundary Between Stable and Unstable Regimes of Accretion},
  author = {A. A. Blinova and R. V. E. Lovelace and M. M. Romanova},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.4363},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures, conference proceedings: "Physics at the Magnetospheric Boundary", Geneva, Switzerland, 25-28 June, 2013