18518081
The wardle instability in interstellar shocks. II. Gas temperature and line emission
We have modeled the gas temperature structure in unstable C-type shocks and obtained predictions for the resultant CO and H2 rotational line emissions, using numerical simulations of the Wardle instability presented in Paper I. Our model for the thermal balance of the gas includes ion-neutral frictional heating; compressional heating; radiative cooling due to rotational and ro-vibrational transitions of the molecules CO, H2O, and H2; and gas-grain collisional cooling. We obtained results for the gas temperature distribution in—and H2 and CO line emission from—shocks of neutral Alfvenic Mach number 10 and velocity 20 or 40 km s-1 in which the Wardle instability has saturated. Both two- and three-dimensional simulations were carried out for shocks in which the preshock magnetic field is perpendicular to the shock propagation direction, and a two-dimensional simulation was carried out for the case in which the magnetic field is obliquely oriented with respect to the shock propagation direction. Although the Wardle instability profoundly affects the density structure behind C-type shocks, most of the shock-excited molecular line emission is generated upstream of the region where the strongest effects of the instability are felt. Thus the Wardle instability has a relatively small effect on the overall gas temperature distribution in—and the emission-line spectrum from—C-type shocks, at least for the cases that we have considered. In none of the cases that we have considered thus far did any of the predicted emission-line luminosities change by more than a factor of 2.5, and in most cases the effects of instability were significantly smaller than that. Slightly larger changes in the line luminosities seem likely for three-dimensional simulations of oblique shocks, although such simulations have yet to be carried out and lie beyond the scope of this study. Given the typical uncertainties that are always present when model predictions are compared with real astronomical data, we conclude that Wardle instability does not imprint any clear observational signature on the shock-excited CO and H2 line strengths. This result justifies the use of one-dimensional steady shock models in the interpretation of observations of shock-excited line emission in regions of star formation. Our three-dimensional simulations of perpendicular shocks revealed the presence of warm filamentary structures that are aligned along the magnetic field, a result that is of possible relevance to models of water maser emission from C-type shocks.
119469897
Electron Heating in Hot Accretion Flows
Local (shearing box) simulations of the nonlinear evolution of the magnetorotational instability in a collisionless plasma show that angular momentum transport by pressure anisotropy (p⊥ ≠ p∥, where the directions are defined with respect to the local magnetic field) is comparable to that due to the Maxwell and Reynolds stresses. Pressure anisotropy, which is effectively a large-scale viscosity, arises because of adiabatic invariants related to p⊥ and p∥ in a fluctuating magnetic field. In a collisionless plasma, the magnitude of the pressure anisotropy, and thus the viscosity, is determined by kinetic instabilities at the cyclotron frequency. Our simulations show that ~50% of the gravitational potential energy is directly converted into heat at large scales by the viscous stress (the remaining energy is lost to grid-scale numerical dissipation of kinetic and magnetic energy). We show that electrons receive a significant fraction [~(Te/Ti)1/2] of this dissipated energy. Employing this heating by an anisotropic viscous stress in one-dimensional models of radiatively inefficient accretion flows, we find that the radiative efficiency of the flow is greater than 0.5% for 10-4Edd. Thus, a low accretion rate, rather than just a low radiative efficiency, is necessary to explain the low luminosity of many accreting black holes. For Sgr A* in the Galactic center, our predicted radiative efficiencies imply an accretion rate of ≈3 × 10-8 M☉ yr-1 and an electron temperature of ≈3 × 1010 K at ≈10 Schwarzschild radii; the latter is consistent with the brightness temperature inferred from VLBI observations.
15251784
Local Axisymmetric Simulations of Magnetorotational Instability in Radiation-dominated Accretion Disks
We perform numerical simulations of magnetorotational instability in a local patch of accretion disk in which radiation pressure exceeds gas pressure. Such conditions may occur in the central regions of disks surrounding compact objects in active galactic nuclei and Galactic X-ray sources. We assume axisymmetry and neglect vertical stratification. The growth rates of the instability on initially uniform magnetic fields are consistent with the linear analysis of Blaes & Socrates (2001). As is the case when radiation effects are neglected, the nonlinear development of the instability leads to transitory turbulence when the initial magnetic field has no net vertical flux. During the turbulent phase, angular momentum is transported outward. The Maxwell stress is a few times the Reynolds stress, and their sum is about 4 times the mean pressure in the vertical component of the magnetic field. For magnetic pressure exceeding gas pressure, turbulent fluctuations in the field produce density contrasts about equal to the ratio of magnetic to gas pressure. These are many times larger than in the corresponding gas pressure-dominated situation and may have profound implications for the steady state vertical structure of radiation-dominated disks. Diffusion of radiation from compressed regions damps turbulent motions, converting kinetic energy into photon energy.
119212484
Global Simulations of Accretion Disks. I. Convergence and Comparisons with Local Models
Grid-based magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations have proven invaluable for the study of astrophysical accretion disks. However, the fact that angular momentum transport in disks is mediated by MHD turbulence (with structure down to very small scales) raises the concern that the properties of the modeled accretion disks are affected by the finite numerical resolution of the simulation. By implementing an orbital advection algorithm into the Athena code in cylindrical geometry, we have performed a set of global (but unstratified) Newtonian disk simulations extending up to resolutions previously unattained. We study the convergence of these models as a function of spatial resolution and initial magnetic field geometry. The usual viscosity parameter (?) or the ratio of thermal-to-magnetic pressure (?) is found to be a poor diagnostic of convergence, whereas the average tilt angle of the magnetic field in the (r, )-plane is a very good diagnostic of convergence. We suggest that this is related to the saturation of the MHD turbulence via parasitic modes of the magnetorotational instability. Even in the case of zero-net magnetic flux, we conclude that our highest resolution simulations (with 32 zones and 64 zones per vertical scale height) have achieved convergence. Our global simulations reach resolutions comparable to those used in local, shearing-box models of MHD disk turbulence. We find that the saturation predictors derived from local simulations correspond well to the instantaneous correlations between local flux and stress found in our global simulations. However, the conservation of magnetic flux implicit in local models is not realized in our global disks. Thus, the magnetic connectivity of an accretion disk represents physics that is truly global and cannot be captured in any ab initio local model.
14314824
THE MAGNETOTHERMAL INSTABILITY IN THE INTRACLUSTER MEDIUM
The electron mean free path in the intracluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters is much larger than the gyroradius; thus, heat is transported anisotropically along magnetic field lines. We show that the intracluster medium is unstable to the magnetothermal instability (MTI) where the temperature declines with radius using MHD simulations with anisotropic thermal conduction. As a result of the MTI, we find that the temperature profile of the ICM can be substantially modified on timescales of several billion years, while the magnetic field is amplified by dynamo action up to more than 50 times the original energy. We also show that the instability drives field lines to become preferentially radial, leading to conduction that is a highly efficient fraction of the Spitzer conductivity.
119484680
An unsplit Godunov method for ideal MHD via constrained transport
We describe a single step, second-order accurate Godunov scheme for ideal MHD based on combining the piecewise parabolic method (PPM) for performing spatial reconstruction, the corner transport upwind (CTU) method of Colella for multidimensional integration, and the constrained transport (CT) algorithm for preserving the divergence-free constraint on the magnetic field. We adopt the most compact form of CT, which requires the field be represented by area-averages at cell faces. We demonstrate that the fluxes of the area-averaged field used by CT can be made consistent with the fluxes of the volume-averaged field returned by a Riemann solver if they obey certain simple relationships. We use these relationships to derive new algorithms for constructing the CT fluxes at grid cell corners which reduce exactly to the equivalent one-dimensional solver for plane-parallel, grid-aligned flow. We show that the PPM reconstruction algorithm must include multidimensional terms for MHD, and we describe a number of important extensions that must be made to CTU in order for it to be used for MHD with CT. We present the results of a variety of test problems to demonstrate the method is accurate and robust.
119115901
Pseudo-Dirac Neutrinos in the New Standard Model
The addition of gauge-singlet fermions to the standard model Lagrangian renders the neutrinos massive and allows one to explain all that is experimentally known about neutrino masses and lepton mixing by varying the values of the Majorana mass parameters M for the gauge singlets and the neutrino Yukawa couplings {lambda}. Here we explore the region of parameter space where M values are much smaller than the neutrino Dirac masses {lambda}v. In this region, neutrinos are pseudo-Dirac fermions. We find that current solar data constrain M values to be less than at least 10{sup -9} eV, and discuss the sensitivity of future experiments to tiny gauge-singlet fermion masses. We also discuss a useful basis for analyzing pseudo-Dirac neutrino mixing effects. In particular, we identify a simple relationship between elements of M and the induced enlarged mixing matrix and new mass-squared differences. These allow one to directly relate bounds on the new mass-squared differences to bounds on the singlet fermion Majorana masses.
34956928
Spectral Hardness Decay with Respect to Fluence in BATSE Gamma‐Ray Bursts
We have analyzed the evolution of the spectral hardness parameter Epk (the maximum of the νFν spectrum) as a function of fluence in gamma-ray bursts. We fit 41 pulses within 26 bursts with the trend reported by Liang & Kargatis, which found that Epk decays exponentially with respect to photon fluence Φ(t). We also fit these pulses with a slight modification of this trend, where Epk decays linearly with energy fluence. In both cases, we found the set of 41 pulses to be consistent with the trend. For the latter trend, which we believe to be more physical, the distribution of the decay constant Φ0 is roughly lognormal, where the mean of log10 Φ0 is 1.75 ± 0.07 and the FWHM of log10 Φ0 is 1.0 ± 0.1. Regarding an earlier reported invariance in Φ0 among different pulses in a single burst, we found probabilities of 0.49-0.84 (depending on the test used) that such invariance would occur by coincidence, most likely because of the narrow distribution of Φ0 values among pulses.
14304615
Baryon, charged hadron, Drell-Yan and J/{psi} production in high energy proton-nucleus collisions
We show that the distributions of outgoing protons and charged hadrons in high energy proton-nucleus collisions are described rather well by a linear extrapolation from proton-proton collisions. The only adjustable parameter required is the shift in rapidity of a produced charged meson when it encounters a target nucleon. Its fitted value is 0.16. Next, we apply this linear extrapolation to precisely measured Drell-Yan cross sections for 800 GeV protons incident on a variety of nuclear targets which exhibit a deviation from linear scaling in the atomic number {ital A}. We show that this deviation can be accounted for by energy degradation of the proton as it passes through the nucleus if account is taken of the time delay of particle production due to quantum coherence. We infer an average proper coherence time of 0.4{plus_minus}0.1hfm/c, corresponding to a coherence path length of 8{plus_minus}2hfm in the rest frame of the nucleus. Finally, we apply the linear extrapolation to measured J/{psi} production cross sections for 200 and 450 GeV/c protons incident on a variety of nuclear targets. Our analysis takes into account energy loss of the beam proton, the time delay of particle production due to quantum coherence, and absorption of the J/{psi}more » on nucleons. The best representation is obtained for a coherence time of 0.5 fm/c, which is consistent with Drell-Yan production, and an absorption cross section of 3.6 mb, which is consistent with the value deduced from photoproduction of the J/{psi} on nuclear targets. {copyright} {ital 1999 American Institute of Physics.}« less
15653990
Missing Molecular Hydrogen and the Physical Conditions of GRB Host Galaxies
We examine the abundance of molecular hydrogen (H2) in the spectra of gamma ray burst afterglows (GRBs). In nearby galaxies, H2 traces the cold neutral medium (CNM) and dense molecular star-forming interstellar gas. Although H2 is detected in at least half of all sight lines toward hot stars in the Magellanic Clouds and in ≈25% of damped Lyα systems toward quasars, it is not detected in any of the five GRB environments with a similar range of neutral hydrogen column density and metallicity. We detect no vibrationally excited H2 that would imply that the GRB itself has photodissociated its parent molecular cloud, so such models are ruled out unless the parent cloud was 4 pc in radius and was fully dissociated prior to the spectroscopic observations, or the star escaped its parent cloud during its main-sequence lifetime. The low molecular fractions for the GRBs are mysterious in light of their large column densities of neutral H and expectations based on local analogs, i.e., 30 Doradus in the LMC. This surprising lack of H2 in GRB damped Lyα absorbers indicates that the destruction processes that suppress molecule formation in the LMC and SMC are more effective in the GRB hosts, most probably due to a combination of low metallicity and an FUV radiation field 10-100 times the Galactic mean field. These inferred conditions place strong constraints on the star-forming regions in these early galaxies.