IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v388y1997i6640d10.1038_41034.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A magnetic switch that determines the speed of astrophysical jets

Author

Listed:
  • D. L. Meier

    (*Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

  • S. Edgington

    (*Jet Propulsion Laboratory
    †Princeton University)

  • P. Godon

    (*Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

  • D. G. Payne

    (‡Intel Corporation)

  • K. R. Lind

    (§Digital Equipment Corporation, LLNL)

Abstract

The mechanism by which astrophysical jets form is an important factor in understanding the nature and evolution of phenomena such as active galactic nuclei and quasars, Galactic superluminal X-ray sources and young stellar objects. Of the many schemes proposed for jet production, only the magnetized accretion disk model of Blandford and Payne1 seems to be applicable to all of these systems, and also offers the potential for generating the highly relativistic flows observed in some quasars2. But the source of variation in jet morphology observed for different sources remains unclear. Here we report time-dependent numerical simulations of jet formation which show that the character and speed of the jets produced depend dramatically on whether magnetic forces dominate over gravity in the accretion disk corona. This ‘magnetic switch’ is not predicted by steady-state, self-similar disk models, or by relativistic wind theory (which generally ignores the gravitational field). The effect provides a natural explanation for the existence of two known classes of extragalactic radio source and for the variation of their properties with radio luminosity. It also provides insight into protostellar and galactic microquasar systems.

Suggested Citation

  • D. L. Meier & S. Edgington & P. Godon & D. G. Payne & K. R. Lind, 1997. "A magnetic switch that determines the speed of astrophysical jets," Nature, Nature, vol. 388(6640), pages 350-352, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:388:y:1997:i:6640:d:10.1038_41034
    DOI: 10.1038/41034
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/41034
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/41034?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:388:y:1997:i:6640:d:10.1038_41034. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.