Related papers: Enhanced Angular Momentum Transport in Accretion D…
Convection-dominated accretion flow (CDAF) is a promising model to explain underluminous accreting black holes in X-ray binaries and galactic nuclei. I discuss effects of angular momentum transport in viscous hydrodynamical and MHD CDAFs.…
The transport of angular momentum (AM) and chemical elements within evolving stars remains poorly understood. Recent observations showed that the radiative cores of low mass main sequence stars and red giants rotate orders of magnitude…
Recent work on the structure of magnetic fields in a turbulent medium gives predictions for the properties of the magnetic flux tubes as a function of the Mach number and scale of the turbulence, and the resistivity and viscosity of the…
Under ideal MHD conditions the magnetic field strength should be correlated with density in the interstellar medium (ISM). However, observations indicate that this correlation is weak. Ambipolar diffusion can decrease the flux-to-mass ratio…
Turbulent motion driven by the magnetorotational instability (MRI) is believed to provide an anomalous viscosity strong enough to account for observed accretion rates in protostellar accretion disks. In the first of two papers, we perform…
The aim of this paper is to investigate the properties of accretion disks threaded by a weak vertical magnetic field, with a particular focus on the interplay between MHD turbulence driven by the magnetorotational instability (MRI) and…
Subramanian, Pujari and Becker (2004) claim that the correct expression for the angular momentum transport in an accretion disc, which is proportional to dOmega/dR, can be derived on the basis of the analysis of the epicyclic motion of gas…
The derivation of the viscosity formula of accretion disks appearing in a number of textbooks is based on a mean free path theory of gas particles. However, this procedure, when followed precisely, leads to the incorrect conclusion that the…
We present three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the nonlinear evolution of the magnetorotational instability (MRI) with a non-zero Ohmic resistivity. The properties of the saturated state depend on the initial magnetic field…
We discuss mechanisms for angular momentum transport in the clumpy medium of the circumnuclear disk at the Galactic center. The viscosity due to clump-clump collisions is found to be less than some critical viscosity; this meets the…
The role of MHD turbulence in astrophysical environments is still highly debated. An important question that permeates this debate is the transport of magnetic flux. This is particularly important, for instance, in the context of star…
Hydromagnetic stresses in accretion discs have been the subject of intense theoretical research over the past one and a half decades. Most of the disc simulations have assumed a small initial magnetic field and studied the turbulence that…
We consider the accretion process in a disk with magnetic fields that are dragged in from the interstellar medium by gravitational collapse. Two diffusive processes are at work in the system: (1) "viscous" torques exerted by turbulent and…
Accretion disks are three-dimensional, turbulent, often self-gravitating, magnetohydrodynamic flows, which can be modeled in detail with numerical simulations. In this paper, we present a new algorithm that is based on a spectral…
Mounting observational evidence indicates that cold circumstellar gas is present in debris disk systems. This work focuses on various dynamical processes that debris-disk gas may undergo. We review five mechanisms that can transport angular…
Detailed calculations of the physical structure of accretion disk boundary layers, and thus their inferred observational properties, rely on the assumption that angular momentum transport is opposite to the radial angular frequency gradient…
The magnetorotational instability (MRI) is thought to be a powerful source of turbulence in Keplerian accretion disks. Motivated by recent laboratory experiments, we study the MRI driven by an azimuthal magnetic field in an electrically…
In this paper, we extend our previous analysis (Lodato & Rice 2004) of the transport properties induced by gravitational instabilities in cooling, gaseous accretion discs to the case where the disc mass is comparable to the central object.…
Turbulence is the most common state of astrophysical flows. In typical astrophysical fluids, turbulence is accompanied by strong magnetic fields, which has a large impact on the dynamics of the turbulent cascade. Recently, there has been a…
Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations have been used to study disk accretion to a rotating magnetized star with an aligned dipole moment. Quiescent initial conditions were developed in order to avoid the fast initial evolution seen in…