Related papers: Early Disk Evolution
Continued observational characterization of transiting planets that reside in close proximity to their host stars has shown that a substantial fraction of such objects posses orbits that are inclined with respect to the spin axes of their…
Most analytic work to date on protostellar disks has focused on those in isolation from their environments. However, observations are now beginning to probe the earliest, most embedded phases of star formation, during which disks are…
Disk accretion onto a magnetized star occurs in a variety of astrophysical contexts, from young stars to X-ray pulsars. The magnetohydrodynamic interaction between the stellar field and the accreting matter can have a strong effect on the…
The role of turbulence in astrophysical environments and its interplay with magnetic fields is still highly debated. In this lecture, we will discuss this issue in the framework of dynamo processes. We will first present a very brief…
The magnetic field of a molecular cloud core may play a role in the formation of circumstellar disks in the core. We present magnetic field morphologies in protostellar cores of 16 targets in the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array…
Magnetic diffusion plays a vital role in star formation. We trace its influence from interstellar cloud scales down to star-disk scales. On both scales, we find that magnetic diffusion can be significantly enhanced by the buildup of strong…
It is still unclear whether the evolution of protoplanetary disks, a key ingredient in the theory of planet formation, is driven by viscous turbulence or magnetic disk winds. As viscously evolving disks expand outward over time, the…
Magnetic fields are known to play a crucial role in the star formation process, particularly in the formation of jets and outflows from protostellar discs. The magnetic field structure in star forming regions is not always uniform and…
Our understanding of the dynamical processes which control the structure and evolution of the interaction region between an accretion disk and the central star is reviewed. If the central star is unmagnetized, this interaction is in the…
Many of the observed spin--orbit alignment properties of exoplanets can be explained in the context of the primordial disk misalignment model, in which an initially aligned protoplanetary disk is torqued by a distant stellar companion on a…
Recent observations of several protoplanetary discs have found evidence of departures from flat, circular motion in the inner regions of the disc. One possible explanation for these observations is a disc warp, which could be induced by a…
The formation, structure and evolution of protoplanetary discs is considered. The formation of giant planets within the environment of these models is also discussed.
(Abridged) In this review we focus on the observations and theory of the formation of early disks and outflows, and their connections with the first phases of planet formation. Large rotationally supported circumstellar disks, although…
We consider formation of accretion disks from a realistically turbulent molecular gas using 3D MHD simulations. In particular, we analyze the effect of the fast turbulent reconnection described by the Lazarian & Vishniac (1999) model for…
We present a model for the rotational evolution of a young, solar mass star interacting with an accretion disk. The model incorporates a description of the angular momentum transfer between the star and disk due to a magnetic connection,…
As Cosmologists struggle to understand the evolution of our universe, an often over-looked element is the affect of gravitational radiation on the primordial plasma field. This appears to be due to the inaccurate approximation of the…
The magnetic fields we observe in galaxies today may have their origins in the very early universe. While a number of mechanisms have been proposed which lead to an appreciable field amplitude at early times, the subsequent evolution of the…
Detached circumplanetary disks are unstable to tilting as a result of the stellar tidal potential. We examine how a tilted circumplanetary disk affects the evolution of the spin axis of an oblate planet. The disk is evolved using…
The origin and evolution of magnetic fields in the Universe is still an open question. Their observations in galaxies suggest strong magnetic fields already at high redshift as well as at present time. However, neither primordial magnetic…
The magnetic fields associated with young stellar objects are expected to have an hour-glass geometry, i.e., the magnetic field lines are pinched as they thread the equatorial plane surrounding the forming star but merge smoothly onto a…