Physics – Plasma Physics
Scientific paper
Oct 2003
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003aps..dppqi2001s&link_type=abstract
American Physical Society, 45th Annual Meeting of the Division of Plasma Physics, October 27-31, 2003, Albuquerque, New Mexico,
Physics
Plasma Physics
Scientific paper
Accretion processes are of great interest in astrophysics because accretion powers such a large range of energetic astronomical sources: from protostars to active galactic nuclei and quasars. Of fundamental importance to the long-term evolution and global structure of accretion disks is the angular momentum transport mechanism. It has long been known that the microscopic viscosity of an astrophysical plasma is far too small to explain observed mass accretion rates, and therefore some sort of anomalous transport mechanism is required. Direct numerical simulations of the local magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) of accretion flows have shown that a linear instability in weakly magnetized shear flows, termed the magnetorotational instability (MRI), saturates as MHD turbulence in three-dimensions producing vigorous angular momentum transport. The progress made in recent years in studies of the local physics of accretion disks has set the stage for predictive theoretical studies of the global disk structure and evolution. In this talk, a variety of results from numerous (primarily numerical) studies of the nonlinear regime of the MRI will be reviewed. These include studies of the saturation mechanism of the MRI (with and without the effects of non-ideal MHD processes such as Ohmic dissipation and the Hall effect), global studies of fully ionized accretion flows around compact objects such as black holes, and local studies of the MRI including self-gravity and a stellar gravitational potential appropriate to the disk of a spiral galaxy. Finally, the prospects to study the MRI in the laboratory, using a liquid metal Couette flow apparatus designed at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, will be discussed.
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