Are Magnetic Wind-Driving Disks Inherently Unstable?

Abstract

There have been claims in the literature that accretion disks in which a centrifugally driven wind is the dominant mode of angular momentum transport are inherently unstable. This issue is considered here by applying an equilibrium-curve analysis to the wind-driving, ambipolar diffusion-dominated, magnetic disk model of Wardle & Konigl (1993). The equilibrium solution curves for this class of models typically exhibit two distinct branches. It is argued that only one of these branches represents unstable equilibria and that a real disk/wind system likely corresponds to a stable solution.

5 pages, 2 figures, to be published in ApJ, vol. 617 (2004 Dec 20). Uses emulateapj.cls

References in corpus (5)

• Magnetized Accretion-Ejection Structures: 2.5D MHD simulations of continuous Ideal Jet launching from resistive accretion disks
• Three-Dimensional Simulations of Jets from Keplerian Disks: Self--Regulatory Stability
• Radiatively inefficient MHD accretion-ejection structures
• Self-similar Collapse of Rotating Magnetic Molecular Cloud Cores
• Stationary accretion disks launching super fast-magnetosonic MHD jets

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Magneto-thermal Disk Wind from Protoplanetary Disks
• A unified accretion-ejection paradigm for Black Hole X-ray Binaries
• The magnetorotational instability as a jet launching mechanism
• Angular momentum transport in protostellar discs
• Magnetocentrifugal Winds in 3D: Nonaxisymmetric Steady State
• Hypersonic Buckshot: Astrophysical Jets as Heterogeneous Collimated Plasmoids
• Global Self-Similar Protostellar Disk/Wind Models
• MHD disc winds
• Radial and vertical angular momentum transport in protostellar discs