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Subgrid Mean-field Dynamo Model with Dynamical Quenching in General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2025-12-04 v1 Plasma Physics

Abstract

Large-scale magnetic fields are relevant for a number of dynamical processes in accretion disks, including driving turbulence, reconnection events, and launching outflows. Numerical simulations have indicated that the initial strengths and configurations of the large-scale magnetic fields have a direct imprint on the outcome of an accretion disk evolution. To facilitate future self-consistent simulations that include intrinsic dynamo processes, we derive and implement a subgrid model of a helical large-scale dynamo with dynamical quenching in general-relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamical simulations of geometrically thin accretion disks. By incorporating previous numerical and analytical results of helical dynamos, our model features only one input parameter, the viscosity parameter αSS\alpha_\text{SS}. We demonstrate that our model can reproduce butterfly diagrams seen in previous local and global simulations. With rather aggressive parameter choice of αSS=0.02\alpha_\text{SS}=0.02 and black hole spin aBH=0.9375a_\text{BH}=0.9375, our thin-disk model launches weak collimated polar outflows with Lorentz factor 1.2\simeq 1.2, but no polar outflow is present with less vigorous turbulence or less positive aBHa_\text{BH}. With negative aBHa_\text{BH}, we find the field configurations to appear more similar to Newtonian cases, whereas for positive aBHa_\text{BH}, the poloidal field loops become distorted and the cycle period becomes sporadic or even disappears. Moreover, we demonstrate how αSS\alpha_\text{SS} can avoid to be prescribed and instead be determined by the local plasma beta. Such a fully dynamical subgrid dynamo allows for self-consistent amplification of the large-scale magnetic fields.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.03443,
  title  = {Subgrid Mean-field Dynamo Model with Dynamical Quenching in General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations},
  author = {Hongzhe Zhou and Yosuke Mizuno and Zhenyu Zhu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.03443},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

16 pages, 13 figures; submitted