Accretion flow

An accretion flow carries matter inward through a gravitationally bound system. In a disk, angular-momentum transport permits the inward drift while stresses carry angular momentum outward.

In magnetically channelled accretion, a strong magnetic field guides an accretion flow along flux tubes. The component of the Lorentz force density parallel to the magnetic field vanishes, so the longitudinal flow can be treated hydrodynamically while the field controls the transverse geometry. A magnetic dipole field near a neutron star channels matter toward small polar caps.

An accretion column carries an inward accretion flow onto a localized region of a star. In the strong-field slender approximation, the magnetic field controls the flux-tube area while longitudinal pressure and gravity determine acceleration. The signed outward-coordinate velocity is negative; the inward speed and mass accretion rate are usually defined positive.

The spin at which the net material and magnetic torque on an accreting star vanishes. The corotation radius is typically comparable to the magnetospheric truncation radius, but the precise torque balance depends on the coupling and any outflow.

A rapidly spinning magnetosphere adds angular momentum to inflowing matter outside the corotation radius, inhibiting accretion and potentially ejecting gas. The centrifugal onset condition does not by itself ensure that every parcel escapes to infinity.

The inner radius at which a stellar magnetic dipole field disrupts a surrounding accretion disk. In a free fall pressure-balance estimate with fixed aspect ratio $ϵ=H/r$, $r_m\sim ({ϵ}^2{\mu }^4/(GM{\dot{M}}^2){)}^{1/7}$. Geometry and inflow structure change its numerical coefficient.

The dipolar flux-tube area has $A(r)=A_{\star }(r/R_{\star }{)}^3$. Applying transonic accretion in a power-law tube with $n=3$ and a polytropic equation of state givesHere $c_0$ and ${\rho }_0$ are the reservoir sound speed and mass density, and $c_s$ is the sound speed at the sonic point. The mass accretion rate isFor two equal polar caps of surface angular radius ${\theta }_{\star }\ll 1$, $A_{\star }\simeq 2\pi R_{\star }^2{\theta }_{\star }^2$. One loaded cap gives half the total rate. The finite-radius transonic branch exists for $1<\gamma <7/5$, must cross outside the star ($r_s>R_{\star }$), and requires ${\theta }_{\star }^2{r}_s/R_{\star }\ll 1$ for the sonic region to remain a narrow flux tube.

A narrow dipolar flux-tube area $A(z)\propto z^3$ gives $A\rho v=\dot{M}$ for inward speed $v>0$. The isothermal magnetic Bernoulli integral in $\Phi =-GM/z$ then gives $(v-c_s^2/v)v\prime =3c_s^2/z-GM/z^2$. A smooth transonic branch crosses at $z_s=GM/(3c_s^2)$ with $v_s=c_s$, ${\rho }_s=e^{5/2}{\rho }_{\infty }$ and $\dot{M}={\rho }_s{c}_{s}A(z_s)$. The crossing must lie in the domain; subsonic branches need not attain it.

For transonic accretion in a dipolar flux tube, the Bernoulli equation at the sonic point contains $c_s^2[1/(\gamma -1)-5/2]$. A positive reservoir energy requires $\gamma <7/5$. Compression in the $r^3$ dipolar flux-tube area raises the specific enthalpy more rapidly than in the $r^2$ geometry of spherical Bondi accretion, whose corresponding upper index is $5/3$.