The influence of the Hall effect on the global stability of cool protostellar disks

Abstract

The influence of the Hall effect on the global stability of cool Kepler disks under the influence of an axial magnetic field is considered. For sufficiently large magnetic Reynolds numbers Rm the magnetorotational instability (MRI) exists in a finite interval of magnetic field amplitudes, B m i n < B < B m a x . For Kepler disks the pure MRI needs both rather high Rm (representing the needed electrical conductivity) as well as B m i n of order 0.1 G. The magnetic field pattern resulting from our global and linear calculations is of quadrupolar parity. For magnetic fields antiparallel to the rotation axis the Hall effect reduces the minimum magnetic Reynolds number by about one order of magnitude. The B m i n , however, is even (sightly) increased (see Fig. 6). For magnetic fields parallel to the rotation axis the Hall effect drives its own instability without the action of the Lorentz force. The corresponding critical magnetic Reynolds number proves to be larger with the Hall effect (Rm ∼ 10) than without the Hall effect (Rm ∼ 7) so that the Hall effect for parallel fields even disturbs the formation of MHD-instability in cool protoplanetary disks. If the disk is supercritical then the main result of the Hall effect for positive fields is the strong reduction of the minimum magnetic field amplitude which is necessary to start the instability. Observations must show whether in star-forming regions the rotation axis and the magnetic field orientation are correlated or are anticorrelated. If the magnetic fields are large enough then our model predicts the dominance of fields antiparallel to the rotation axis.