Global MHD simulations of stratified and turbulent protoplanetary discs. I. Model properties

We present the results of global 3-D MHD simulations of stratified and turbulent protoplanetary disc models. The aim of this work is to develop thin disc models capable of sustaining turbulence for long run times, which can be used for on-going studies of planet formation in turbulent discs. The results are obtained using two codes written in spherical coordinates: GLOBAL and NIRVANA. Both are time--explicit and use finite differences along with the Constrained Transport algorithm to evolve the equations of MHD. In the presence of a weak toroidal magnetic field, a thin protoplanetary disc in hydrostatic equilibrium is destabilised by the magnetorotational instability (MRI). When the resolution is large enough (25 vertical grid cells per scale height), the entire disc settles into a turbulent quasi steady-state after about 300 orbits. Angular momentum is transported outward such that the standard alpha parameter is roughly 4-6*10^{-3}. We find that the initial toroidal flux is expelled from the disc midplane and that the disc behaves essentially as a quasi-zero net flux disc for the remainder of the simulation. As in previous studies, the disc develops a dual structure composed of an MRI--driven turbulent core around its midplane, and a magnetised corona stable to the MRI near its surface. By varying disc parameters and boundary conditions, we show that these basic properties of the models are robust. The high resolution disc models we present in this paper achieve a quasi--steady state and sustain turbulence for hundreds of orbits. As such, they are ideally suited to the study of outstanding problems in planet formation such as disc--planet interactions and dust dynamics.Comment: 19 pages, 29 figures, accepted in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Test results for composite specimens and elements containing joints and cutouts

A program was conducted to develop the technology for joints and cutouts in a composite fuselage that meets all design requirements of a large transport aircraft for the 1990s. An advanced trijet derivative of the DC-10 was selected as the baseline aircraft. Design and analysis of a 30-foot-long composite fuselage barrel provided a realistic basis for the test effort. The primary composite material was Hexcel F584 resin on 12 K IM6 fiber, in tape and broadgoods form. Fiberglass broadgoods were used in E-glass and S-glass fiber form in the cutout region of some panels. Additionally, injection-molded chopped graphite fiber/PEEK was used for longeron-to-frame shear clips. The test effort included four groups of test specimens, beginning with coupon specimens of mono-layer and cross-piled laminates, progressing through increasingly larger and more complex specimens, and ending with two 4- by 5-foot curved fuselage side panels. One of the side panels incorporated a transverse skin splice, while the second included two cabin window cutouts

Magnetically Driven Jets in the Kerr Metric

We compute a series of three-dimensional general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of accretion flows in the Kerr metric to investigate the properties of the unbound outflows that result. The overall strength of these outflows increases sharply with increasing black hole rotation rate, but a number of generic features are found in all cases. The mass in the outflow is concentrated in a hollow cone whose opening angle is largely determined by the effective potential for matter orbiting with angular momentum comparable to that of the innermost stable circular orbit. The dominant force accelerating the matter outward comes from the pressure of the accretion disk's corona. The principal element that shapes the outflow is therefore the centrifugal barrier preventing accreting matter from coming close to the rotation axis. Inside the centrifugal barrier, the cone contains very little matter and is dominated by electromagnetic fields that rotate at a rate tied closely to the rotation of the black hole. These fields carry an outward-going Poynting flux whose immediate energy source is the rotating spacetime of the Kerr black hole. When the spin parameter a/M of the black hole exceeds ~0.9, the energy carried to infinity by these outflows can be comparable to the nominal radiative efficiency predicted in the Novikov-Thorne model. Similarly, the expelled angular momentum can be comparable to that accreted by the black hole. Both the inner electromagnetic part and the outer matter part can contribute in significant fashion to the energy and angular momentum of the outflow.Comment: 43 pages 12 figures To Appear in the Astrophysical Journal replaced figure 3c with correct imag

A Meiotic Tapas Menu

this past fall (September 13-18), the 7th European Meiosis Meeting held in San Lorenzo de El Escorial brought us'Meiosis in Madrid.''This is a sister conference to the Gordon Meiosis series held every other year in the United States, and is an international small-format forum for sharing hot, new results, with an emphasis on unpublished work. At the conference, 21 countries were represented by 167 participants, with a nearly equal split between male and female scientists. The aim of the meeting was to present and promote in-depth discussions about all aspects of meiotic chromosome dynamics, recombination, and segregation. Rather than providing a comprehensive description of the meeting abstracts, this report will briefly describe meeting highlights, guided in large part by feedback from session chairs

Temperature-driven transition from the Wigner Crystal to the Bond-Charge-Density Wave in the Quasi-One-Dimensional Quarter-Filled band

It is known that within the interacting electron model Hamiltonian for the one-dimensional 1/4-filled band, the singlet ground state is a Wigner crystal only if the nearest neighbor electron-electron repulsion is larger than a critical value. We show that this critical nearest neighbor Coulomb interaction is different for each spin subspace, with the critical value decreasing with increasing spin. As a consequence, with the lowering of temperature, there can occur a transition from a Wigner crystal charge-ordered state to a spin-Peierls state that is a Bond-Charge-Density Wave with charge occupancies different from the Wigner crystal. This transition is possible because spin excitations from the spin-Peierls state in the 1/4-filled band are necessarily accompanied by changes in site charge densities. We apply our theory to the 1/4-filled band quasi-one-dimensional organic charge-transfer solids in general and to 2:1 tetramethyltetrathiafulvalene (TMTTF) and tetramethyltetraselenafulvalene (TMTSF) cationic salts in particular. We believe that many recent experiments strongly indicate the Wigner crystal to Bond-Charge-Density Wave transition in several members of the TMTTF family. We explain the occurrence of two different antiferromagnetic phases but a single spin-Peierls state in the generic phase diagram for the 2:1 cationic solids. The antiferromagnetic phases can have either the Wigner crystal or the Bond-Charge-Spin-Density Wave charge occupancies. The spin-Peierls state is always a Bond-Charge-Density Wave.Comment: 12 pages, 8 EPS figures. Longer version of previous manuscript. Contains new numerical data as well as greatly expanded discussio

On the Ionisation Fraction in Protoplanetary Disks II: The Effect of Turbulent Mixing on Gas--phase Chemistry

We calculate the ionisation fraction in protostellar disk models using two different gas-phase chemical networks, and examine the effect of turbulent mixing by modelling the diffusion of chemical species vertically through the disk. The aim is to determine in which regions of the disk gas can couple to a magnetic field and sustain MHD turbulence. We find that the effect of diffusion depends crucially on the elemental abundance of heavy metals (magnesium) included in the chemical model. In the absence of heavy metals, diffusion has essentially no effect on the ionisation structure of the disks, as the recombination time scale is much shorter than the turbulent diffusion time scale. When metals are included with an elemental abundance above a threshold value, the diffusion can dramatically reduce the size of the magnetically decoupled region, or even remove it altogther. For a complex chemistry the elemental abundance of magnesium required to remove the dead zone is 10(-10) - 10(-8). We also find that diffusion can modify the reaction pathways, giving rise to dominant species when diffusion is switched on that are minor species when diffusion is absent. This suggests that there may be chemical signatures of diffusive mixing that could be used to indirectly detect turbulent activity in protoplanetary disks. We find examples of models in which the dead zone in the outer disk region is rendered deeper when diffusion is switched on. Overall these results suggest that global MHD turbulence in protoplanetary disks may be self-sustaining under favourable circumstances, as turbulent mixing can help maintain the ionisation fraction above that necessary to ensure good coupling between the gas and magnetic field.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures; accepted for publication in A &

Numerical evidence for `multi-scalar stars'

We present a class of general relativistic soliton-like solutions composed of multiple minimally coupled, massive, real scalar fields which interact only through the gravitational field. We describe a two-parameter family of solutions we call ``phase-shifted boson stars'' (parameterized by central density rho_0 and phase delta), which are obtained by solving the ordinary differential equations associated with boson stars and then altering the phase between the real and imaginary parts of the field. These solutions are similar to boson stars as well as the oscillating soliton stars found by Seidel and Suen [E. Seidel and W.M. Suen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 66, 1659 (1991)]; in particular, long-time numerical evolutions suggest that phase-shifted boson stars are stable. Our results indicate that scalar soliton-like solutions are perhaps more generic than has been previously thought.Comment: Revtex. 4 pages with 4 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev.

BOSS Ultracool Dwarfs I: Colors and Magnetic Activity of M and L dwarfs

We present the colors and activity of ultracool (M7-L8) dwarfs from the Tenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We combine previous samples of SDSS M and L dwarfs with new data obtained from the Baryon Oscillation Sky Survey (BOSS) to produce the BOSS Ultracool Dwarf (BUD) sample of 11820 M7-L8 dwarfs. By combining SDSS data with photometry from the Two Micron All Sky Survey and the Wide-Field Infrared Sky Explorer mission, we present ultracool dwarf colors from $i-z$ to $W2-W3$ as a function of spectral type, and extend the SDSS-2MASS-WISE color locus to include ultracool dwarfs. The $i-z$, $i-J$, and $z-J$ colors provide the best indication of spectral type for M7-L3 dwarfs. We also examine ultracool dwarf chromospheric activity through the presence and strength of H$\alpha$ emission. The fraction of active dwarfs rises through the M spectral sequence until it reaches $\sim$90% at spectral type L0. The fraction of active dwarfs then declines to 50% at spectral type L5; no H$\alpha$ emission is observed in the late-L dwarfs in the BUD sample. The fraction of active L0-L5 dwarfs is much higher than previously observed. The strength of activity declines with spectral type from M7 through L3, after which the data do not show a clear trend. Using one-dimensional chromosphere models, we explore the range of filling factors and chromospheric temperature structures that are consistent with H$\alpha$ observations of M0-L7 dwarfs. M dwarf chromospheres have a similar, smoothly varying range of temperature and surface coverage while L dwarf chromospheres are cooler and have smaller filling factors.Comment: 24 pages and 13 figures, submitted to AJ. A short video describing these results can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwX5WkuJCU