Episodic Accretion on to Strongly Magnetic Stars

Abstract

Some accreting neutron stars and young stars show unexplained episodic flares in the form of quasi-periodic oscillations or recurrent outbursts. In a series of two papers we present new work on an instability that can lead to episodic outbursts when the accretion disc is truncated by the star's strong magnetic field close to the corotation radius (where the Keplerian frequency matches the star's rotational frequency). In this paper we outline the physics of the instability and use a simple parameterization of the disc-field interaction to explore the instability numerically, which we show can lead to repeated bursts of accretion as well as steady-state solutions, as first suggested by Sunyaev and Shakura. The cycle time of these bursts increases with decreasing accretion rate. These solutions show that the usually assumed `propeller' state, in which mass is ejected from the system, does not need to occur even at very low accretion rates.

13 pages, 8 figures, accepted to MNRAS, minor corrections following referee report

References in corpus (5)

• Launching of Conical Winds and Axial Jets from the Disk-Magnetosphere Boundary: Axisymmetric and 3D Simulations
• Episodic Accretion on to Strongly Magnetic Stars
• Accretion to Magnetized Stars through the Rayleigh-Taylor Instability: Global Three-Dimensional Simulations
• Turbulent resistivity driven by the magnetorotational instability
• 1 Hz flaring in SAX J1808.4--3658: flow instabilities near the propeller stage

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