Small scale dynamics of accretion disks using shearing box simulations

CECILIA BEJARANO; DANIEL GÓMEZ

CABA - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Otro; Tenth J. J. Giambiagi Winter School: Principles and Applications on Fluid Dynamics; 2008

Departamento de Física - FCEyN - UBA

Accretion disks are formed by matter containing a significant amount of angular momentum being gravitationally attracted by compact objects. These very interesting astrophysical flows are a powerful mechanism of conversion of gravitational energy into kinetic energy and radiation, and take place in a variety of objects ranging from binary systems to active galactic nuclei. Theoretical models of accretion require the generation of small-scale turbulence to enhance the effective viscosity of the flow. Within the framework of magnetohydrodynamics, we derive the equations describing the small-scale dynamics of small parcels of fluid subjected to a large-scale differential rotation flow, also known as shearing box equations. We implemented a pseudo-spectral code to perform shearing box simulations. We show our preliminary results and compare them with those recently reported in the literature.