Magnetocentrifugally driven flows from young stars and disks. 2: Formulation of the dynamical problem

Details Magnetocentrifugally driven flows from young stars and disks. 2: Formulation of the dynamical problem Magnetocentrifugally driven flows from young stars and disks. 2: Formulation of the dynamical problem

Jul 1994

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994apj...429..797s&link_type=abstract

The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 429, no. 2, pt. 1, p. 797-807

Computer Science

Numerical Analysis

118

Astronomical Models, Centrifugal Force, Disk Galaxies, Formulations, Magnetic Fields, Mass Flow, Protostars, T Tauri Stars, Analytic Functions, Angular Momentum, Asymptotic Series, Axisymmetric Flow, Boundary Value Problems, Magnetohydrodynamic Flow, Numerical Analysis, Partial Differential Equations

Scientific paper

We formulate the dynamical problem of a cool wind centrifugally driven from the magnetic interface of a young star and an adjoining Keplerian disk. We examine the situation for mildly accreting T Tauri stars that rotate slowly as well as rapidly accreting protostars that rotate near break-up. In both cases a wind can be driven from a small X-region just outside the stellar magnetopause, where the field lines assume an open geometry and are rooted to material that rotates at an angular speed equal both to the local Keplerian value and to the stellar angular speed. Assuming axial symmetry for the ideal magnetohydrodynamic flow, which requires us to postpone asking how the (lightly ionized) gas is loaded onto field lines, we can formally integrate all the governing equations analytically except for a partial equation that describes how streamlines spread in the meridional plane. Apart from the difficulty of dealing with PDEs of mixed type, finding the functional forms of the conserved quantities along streamlines - the ratio beta of magnetic field to mass flux, the specific energy H of the fluid in the rotating frame, and the total specific angular momentum J carried in the matter and the field - constitutes a standard difficulty in this kind of (Grad-Shafranov) formalism. Fortunately, because the ratio of the thermal speed of the mass-loss regions to the Keplerian speed of rotation of the interface constitutes a small parameter epsilon, we can attack the overall problem by the method of matched asymptotic expansions. This procedure leads to a natural and systematic technique for obtaining the relevant functional dependences of beta, H, and J. Moreover, we are able to solve analytically for the properties of the flow emergent from the small transsonic region driven by gas pressure without having to specify the detailed form of any of the conserved functions, beta, H, and J. This analytical solution provides inner boundary conditions for the numerical computation in a companion paper by Najita & Shu of the larger region where the main acceleration to terminal speeds occurs.

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