Magnetocentrifugal acceleration

Magnetocentrifugal acceleration occurs when matter tied to a rotating inclined magnetic field moves outward under the effective centrifugal force. For a Keplerian disc, cold launching is possible when the field tilts by more than $30^{\circ }$ from the vertical.

For a cold corotating field line anchored in a circular point-mass orbit, the effective potential has meridional Hessian ${\omega }^2\mathrm{diag}(-3,1)$. Along a straight line inclined by $\alpha$ to the vertical its quadratic curvature is ${\omega }^2(1-4{\sin }^2\alpha )$. Negative curvature gives the strict local launching criterion. Equality is marginal and global escape requires additional information.

At exactly thirty degrees the quadratic curvature vanishes, but the specified straight-line point-mass effective potential is downhill for small positive displacement at cubic order. Thus the strict negative-curvature criterion does not exclude every nonlinear one-sided marginal launch. An exactly stationary bead remains at equilibrium until displaced.

In a flattened power-law gravitational potential $\Phi ={\Phi }_0{R}_0^{\beta }(R^2+{\lambda }^2{z}^2{)}^{-\beta /2}$, a magnetic surface corotating with its disk footpoint has an effective potential with meridional Hessian matrix ${\Omega }_f^2\mathrm{diag}[-(\beta +2),{\lambda }^2]$ there. A cold outward displacement along a field inclined by $\alpha$ to the vertical is downhill when ${\tan }^2\alpha >{\lambda }^2/(\beta +2)$. Equality is marginal and can depend on higher derivatives and field-line curvature; this is a local launching criterion, not a guarantee of a global escaping wind.