Reverse Rotation of the Accretion Disk in RW Aur A: Observations and a Physical Model

Abstract

Speckle interferometry of the young binary system RW Aur was performed with the 6-m telescope of the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences using filters with central wavelengths of 550 nm and 800 nm and pass-band halfwidths of 20 nm and 100 nm, respectively. The angular separation of the binary components was 1.448"{\pm}0.005 and the position angle of the system was 255.9°{\pm}0.3° at the observation epoch (JD 2 454 255.9). We find using published data that these values have been changing with mean rates of +0.002"/yr and +0.02°/yr, respectively, over the past 70 years. This implies that the direction of the orbital motion of the binary system is opposite to the direction of the disk rotation in RW Aur A. We propose a physical model to explain the formation of circumstellar accretion disks rotating in the reverse direction relative to young binary stars surrounded by protoplanetary disks. Our model can explain the characteristic features of the matter flow in RW Aur A: the high accretion rate, small size of the disk around the massive component, and reverse direction of rotation.

arXiv commentE-mail: [email protected]

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• Recurring Occultations of RW Aurigae by Coagulated Dust in the Tidally Disrupted Circumstellar Disk
• Long-term simulation of MHD jet launching from an orbiting star-disk system
• Stable and Unstable Regimes of Mass Accretion onto RW Aur A
• The effect of external environment on the evolution of protostellar disks
• Stellar Flyby Analysis for Spiral Arm Hosts with Gaia DR3
• Time-Variable Jet Ejections from RW Aur A, RY Tau and DG Tau
• The jet of the young star RW Aur A and related problems
• Curved jet motion. I. Orbiting and precessing jets
• Multi-epoch, high spatial resolution observations of multiple T Tauri systems
• RW Aur B: a modest UX Ori type companion of the famous primary