Abstract: Accretion onto neutron stars produces a wide variety of high-energy astrophysical phenomena, including millisecond X-ray pulsars, ultra-luminous X-ray sources, and relativistic jets. I’ll describe recent 3D general-relativistic MHD simulations that show how these systems can transition between accreting, propeller, and isolated states, and launch jets using the star’s rotation and magnetic field. The behavior of the star–disk system is sensitive to the relative orientation of the two components’ dominant magnetic fields, a degree of freedom absent from the black hole problem. In some cases their interaction leads to large plumes of stellar magnetic flux entering the accretion flow, in a manner similar to flux eruptions in magnetically arrested black hole systems.
You Don’t Have to Choose Between Propellers and Jets
Kyle Parfrey (Princeton University) // October 21, 2024
Abstract: Accretion onto neutron stars produces a wide variety of high-energy astrophysical phenomena, including millisecond X-ray pulsars, ultra-luminous X-ray sources, and relativistic jets. I’ll describe recent 3D general-relativistic MHD simulations that show how these systems can transition between accreting, propeller, and isolated states, and launch jets using the star’s rotation and magnetic field. The behavior of the star–disk system is sensitive to the relative orientation of the two components’ dominant magnetic fields, a degree of freedom absent from the black hole problem. In some cases their interaction leads to large plumes of stellar magnetic flux entering the accretion flow, in a manner similar to flux eruptions in magnetically arrested black hole systems.