The angular momentum transport by unstable toroidal magnetic fields

Abstract

We demonstrate with a nonlinear MHD code that angular momentum can be transported due to the magnetic instability of toroidal fields under the influence of differential rotation, and that the resulting effective viscosity may be high enough to explain the almost rigid-body rotation observed in radiative stellar cores. Only stationary current-free fields and only those combinations of rotation rates and magnetic field amplitudes which provide maximal numerical values of the viscosity are considered. We find that the dimensionless ratio of the effective over molecular viscosity, ${\nu }_T/\nu$;, linearly grows with the Reynolds number of the rotating fluid multiplied with the square-root of the magnetic Prandtl number - which is of order unity for the considered red sub-giant KIC 7341231. For the considered interval of magnetic Reynolds numbers - which is restricted by numerical constraints of the nonlinear MHD code - there is a remarkable influence of the magnetic Prandtl number on the relative importance of the contributions of the Reynolds stress and the Maxwell stress to the total viscosity, which is magnetically dominated only for Pm $\gtrsim$ 0.5. We also find that the magnetized plasma behaves as a non-Newtonian fluid, i.e. the resulting effective viscosity depends on the shear in the rotation law. The decay time of the differential rotation thus depends on its shear and becomes longer and longer during the spin-down of a stellar core.

Revised version. 7 pages, 9 figures; accepted for publication in A&A

References in corpus (2)

• YREC: The Yale Rotating Stellar Evolution Code
• Attempts to reproduce the rotation profile of the red giant KIC 7341231 observed by Kepler

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• The effects of surface fossil magnetic fields on massive star evolution: II. Implementation of magnetic braking in MESA and implications for the evolution of surface rotation in OB stars
• Near-degeneracy effects on the frequencies of rotationally-split mixed modes in red giants
• 3D evolution of magnetic fields in a differentially rotating stellar radiative zone