English

Characterising the Dynamo in a Radiatively Inefficient Accretion Flow

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2020-04-28 v2

Abstract

We explore the MRI driven dynamo in a radiatively inefficient accretion flow (RIAF) using the mean field dynamo paradigm. Using singular value decomposition (SVD) we obtain the least squares fitting dynamo coefficients α\alpha and γ\gamma by comparing the time series of the turbulent electromotive force and the mean magnetic field. Our study is the first one to show the poloidal distribution of these dynamo coefficients in global accretion flow simulations. Surprisingly, we obtain a high value of the turbulent pumping coefficient γ\gamma which transports the mean magnetic flux radially outward. This would have implications for the launching of magnetised jets which are produced efficiently in presence a large-scale poloidal magnetic field close to the compact object. We present a scenario of a truncated disc beyond the RIAF where a large scale dynamo-generated poloidal magnetic field can aid jet-launching close to the black hole. Magnitude of all the calculated coefficients decreases with radius. Meridional variations of αϕϕ\alpha_{\phi \phi}, responsible for toroidal to poloidal field conversion, is very similar to that found in shearing box simulations using the `test field' (TF) method. By estimating the relative importance of α\alpha-effect and shear, we conclude that the MRI driven large-scale dynamo, which operates at high latitudes beyond a disc scale height, is essentially of the αΩ\alpha-\Omega type.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1912.04916,
  title  = {Characterising the Dynamo in a Radiatively Inefficient Accretion Flow},
  author = {Prasun Dhang and Abhijit Bendre and Prateek Sharma and Kandaswamy Subramanian},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.04916},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

13 pages, 11 figures, published in MNRAS

R2 v1 2026-06-23T12:41:54.682Z