Spin-up/spin-down of magnetized stars with accretion discs and outflows

Abstract

An investigation is made of disk accretion of matter onto a rotating star with an aligned dipole magnetic field. A new aspect of this work is that when the angular velocity of the star and disk differ substantially we argue that the $\bf B$ field linking the star and disk rapidly inflates to give regions of open field lines extending from the polar caps of the star and from the disk. The open field line region of the disk leads to the possibility of magnetically driven outflows. An analysis is made of the outflows and their back affect on the disk structure assuming an ``$\ap$" turbulent viscosity model for the disk and a magnetic diffusivity comparable to this viscosity. The outflows are found to extend over a range of radial distances inward to a distance close to $r_{to}$, which is the distance of the maximum of the angular rotation rate of the disk. We find that $r_{to}$ depends on the star's magnetic moment, the accretion rate, and the disk's magnetic diffusivity. The outflow regime is accompanied in general by a spin-up of the rotation rate of the star. When $r_{to}$ exceeds the star's corotation radius $r_{cr} = (GM/\om_*^2)^{1\ov 3}$, we argue that outflow solutions do not occur, but instead that ``magnetic braking" of the star by the disk due to field-line twisting occurs in the vicinity of $r_{cr}$. The magnetic braking solutions can give spin-up or spin-down (or no spin change) of the star depending mainly on the star's magnetic moment and the mass accretion rate. For a system with $r_{to}$ comparable to $r_{cr}$, bimodal behavior is possible where extraneous perturbations cause the system to flip between spin-up and spin-down.