Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jul 1996
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996apj...465..855l&link_type=abstract
Astrophysical Journal v.465, p.855
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
38
Accretion, Accretion Disks, Magnetohydrodynamics: Mhd, Stars: Mass Loss
Scientific paper
Magnetocentrifugal winds driven from rapidly rotating objects are the leading models for outflows observed in many astrophysical systems, ranging from young stellar objects to active galactic nuclei. In this paper, we focus on winds that are launched from lightly ionized, nearly Keplerian disks inside which neutral matter can move across static magnetic field lines via ambipolar diffusion. We present fully self-consistent, self-similar numerical solutions to the structure of both the disk and the wind. These solutions illustrate clearly, through streamlines obtained self-consistently, how a small fraction of the accreting matter is turned around near the surface of the disk and accelerated away magnetocentrifugally to form a high-speed outflow, carrying away excess angular momentum that allows the rest of the disk material to accrete. The mass-loss rate in the wind is related to the magnetic field distribution on the disk, which has to be determined self-consistently from the disk-wind solution. We find that it must be shallower than that of Blandford & Payne in order to accommodate the mass loss in the outflow. Two representative solutions are used to demonstrate the crucial dependence of the properties of the diskwind systems on the strength of the disk-threading magnetic field and on the coupling between the field and the disk matter. Our global disk-wind treatment complements the local analysis of Wardle & Königl, who focused on protostellar disk regions of order 102 AU in radius. We show that magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) winds could also be driven from ambipolar diffusion-dominated disk regions much closer to the central stars under certain circumstances, at a radius of order 1 AU. These winds should be able to extract a much larger fraction of the total accretion luminosity.
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