Rocking shadows in broken circumbinary discs
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
2020-02-19 v1 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Abstract
We use three dimensional simulations with coupled hydrodynamics and Monte Carlo radiative transfer to show that shadows cast by the inner disc in broken circumbinary discs move within a confined range of position angles on the outer disc. Over time, shadows appear to rock back and forth in azimuth as the inner disc precesses. The effect occurs because the inner disc precesses around a vector that is not the angular momentum vector of the outer disc. We relate our findings to recent observations of shadows in discs.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2002.02983,
title = {Rocking shadows in broken circumbinary discs},
author = {Rebecca Nealon and Daniel Price and Christophe Pinte},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.02983},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
5 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters. Movie of figure 1 available at https://youtu.be/jGYLuEx-I78