3,240 research outputs found
Radiation induced warping of protostellar accretion disks
We examine the consequences of radiatively driven warping of accretion disks
surrounding pre-main-sequence stars. These disks are stable against warping if
the luminosity arises from a steady accretion flow, but are unstable at late
times when the intrinsic luminosity of the star overwhelms that provided by the
disk. Warps can be excited for stars with luminosities of around 10 solar
luminosities or greater, with larger and more severe warps in the more luminous
systems. A twisted inner disk may lead to high extinction towards stars often
viewed through their disks. After the disk at all radii becomes optically thin,
the warp decays gradually on the local viscous timescale, which is likely to be
long. We suggest that radiation induced warping may account for the origin of
the warped dust disk seen in Beta Pictoris, if the star is only around 10-20
Myr old, and could lead to non-coplanar planetary systems around higher mass
stars.Comment: 12 pages, including 3 figures. ApJ Letters, in pres
Are Intervention-Design Characteristics More Predictive than Baseline Participant Characteristics on Participant Attendance to a Paediatric, Community Weight Management Programme?
BACKGROUND: Approximately 50% of participants complete a paediatric weight management programme, yet the predictors of attendance and dropout are inconsistent. This study investigates subject and intervention-design characteristics associated with attendance at a group based, family weight management programme.
SETTING AND SUBJECTS: Secondary data analysis of 2948 subjects (Age 10.4±2.8 years, BMI 26.0±5.7kg/m2, Standardised BMI (BMI SDS) 2.48±0.87, White 70.3%) from 244 MoreLife (UK) programmes. Subjects attend weekly for 10-12 weeks, sessions last 2-3 hours. Sessions include lifestyle guidance and physical activity.
METHOD: Subject characteristics (demographics, psychological (body satisfaction & self-esteem) and sedentary behaviour) were gathered at first contact and BMI SDS was noted weekly. Intervention-design characteristics were recorded (year, length (weeks), group size, age segregation and day of session). Attendance was calculated as total number of sessions attended (%). Multivariate linear regression examined predictors of attendance and multiple imputation countered missing data. RESULTS: Average attendance was 59.4%±29.3%. Baseline subject characteristics were âpoorâ predictors of attendance. Intervention year, group size and day of session significantly predicted attendance (Tables 1 & 2). Yet, the most predictive marker of attendance was a change in BMI SDS during the programme (B = -0.38, 95% CI = -0.43 - -0.33).
CONCLUSION: A reduction in BMI was seen to predict greater attendance. However, baseline subject characteristics were weakly associated with attendance, refuting past findings. Dominant intervention characteristics (large groups, weekend sessions and recent delivery) predicted lower attendance. Future programmes may be better informed
Magnetically modulated accretion in T Tauri stars
We examine how accretion on to T Tauri stars may be modulated by a
time-dependent `magnetic gate' where the inner edge of the accretion disc is
disrupted by a varying stellar field. We show that magnetic field variations on
time-scales shorter than 10^5 yr can modulate the accretion flow, thus
providing a possible mechanism both for the marked photometric variability of T
Tauri stars and for the possible conversion of T Tauri stars between classical
and weak line status. We thus suggest that archival data relating to the
spectrophotometric variability of T Tauri stars may provide an indirect record
of magnetic activity cycles in low-mass pre-main-sequence stars.Comment: LaTeX file (requires mn.sty), 4 pages, no figures or tables. To
appear in MNRAS
The alignment of disk and black hole spins in active galactic nuclei
The inner parts of an accretion disk around a spinning black hole are forced
to align with the spin of the hole by the Bardeen-Petterson effect. Assuming
that any jet produced by such a system is aligned with the angular momentum of
either the hole or the inner disk, this can, in principle provide a mechanism
for producing steady jets in AGN whose direction is independent of the angular
momentum of the accreted material. However, the torque which aligns the inner
disk with the hole, also, by Newton's third law, tends to align the spin of the
hole with the outer accretion disk. In this letter, we calculate this alignment
timescale for a black hole powering an AGN, and show that it is relatively
short. This timescale is typically much less than the derived ages for jets in
radio loud AGN, and implies that the jet directions are not in general
controlled by the spin of the black hole. We speculate that the jet directions
are most likely controlled either by the angular momentum of the accreted
material or by the gravitational potential of the host galaxy.Comment: 4 pages, LateX file, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter
Retrograde Accretion and Merging Supermassive Black Holes
We investigate whether a circumbinary gas disc can coalesce a supermassive
black hole binary system in the centre of a galaxy. This is known to be
problematic for a prograde disc. We show that in contrast, interaction with a
retrograde circumbinary disc is considerably more effective in shrinking the
binary because there are no orbital resonances. The binary directly absorbs
negative angular momentum from the circumbinary disc by capturing gas into a
disc around the secondary black hole, or discs around both holes if the binary
mass ratio is close to unity. In many cases the binary orbit becomes eccentric,
shortening the pericentre distance as the eccentricity grows. In all cases the
binary coalesces once it has absorbed the angular momentum of a gas mass
comparable to that of the secondary black hole. Importantly, this conclusion is
unaffected even if the gas inflow rate through the disc is formally
super--Eddington for either hole. The coalescence timescale is therefore always
, where is the secondary black hole mass and
the inflow rate through the circumbinary disc.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Movies of the
simulations can be found at:
http://www.astro.le.ac.uk/users/cjn12/RetroBinaryMovies.htm
Warped discs and the directional stability of jets in Active Galactic Nuclei
Warped accretion discs in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) exert a torque on the
black hole that tends to align the rotation axis with the angular momentum of
the outer disc. We compute the magnitude of this torque by solving numerically
for the steady state shape of the warped disc, and verify that the analytic
solution of Scheuer and Feiler (1996) provides an excellent approximation. We
generalise these results for discs with strong warps and arbitrary surface
density profiles, and calculate the timescale on which the black hole becomes
aligned with the angular momentum in the outer disc. For massive holes and
accretion rates of the order of the Eddington limit the alignment timescale is
always short (less than a Myr), so that jets accelerated from the inner disc
region provide a prompt tracer of the angular momentum of gas at large radii in
the disc. Longer timescales are predicted for low luminosity systems, depending
on the degree of anisotropy in the disc's hydrodynamic response to shear and
warp, and for the final decay of modest warps at large radii in the disc that
are potentially observable via VLBI. We discuss the implications of this for
the inferred accretion history of those Active Galactic Nuclei whose jet
directions appear to be stable over long timescales. The large energy
deposition rate at modest disc radii during rapid realignment episodes should
make such objects transiently bright at optical and infrared wavelengths.Comment: MNRAS, in press. Revised to match accepted version, with one new
figure showing alignment timescale as a function of black hole mas
Preliminary results on performance testing of a turbocharged rotary combustion engine
The performance of a turbocharged rotary engine at power levels above 75 kW (100 hp) was studied. A twin rotor turbocharged Mazda engine was tested at speeds of 3000 to 6000 rpm and boost pressures to 7 psi. The NASA developed combustion diagnostic instrumentation was used to quantify indicated and pumping mean effect pressures, peak pressure, and face to face variability on a cycle by cycle basis. Results of this testing showed that a 5900 rpm a 36 percent increase in power was obtained by operating the engine in the turbocharged configuration. When operating with lean carburetor jets at 105 hp (78.3 kW) and 4000 rpm, a brake specific fuel consumption of 0.45 lbm/lb-hr was measured
Lense-Thirring precession of accretion disks around compact objects
Misaligned accretion disks surrounding rotating compact objects experience a
torque due to the Lense-Thirring effect, which leads to precession of the inner
disk. It has been suggested that this effect could be responsible for some low
frequency Quasi-Periodic Oscillations observed in the X-ray lightcurves of
neutron star and galactic black hole systems. We investigate this possibility
via time-dependent calculations of the response of the inner disk to impulsive
perturbations for both Newtonian point mass and Paczynski-Wiita potentials, and
compare the results to the predictions of the linearized twisted accretion disk
equations. For most of a wide range of disk models that we have considered, the
combination of differential precession and viscosity causes the warps to decay
extremely rapidly. Moreover, at least for relatively slowly rotating objects,
linear calculations in a Newtonian point mass potential provide a good measure
of the damping rate, provided only that the timescale for precession is much
shorter than the viscous time in the inner disk. The typically rapid decay
rates suggest that coherent precession of a fluid disk would not be observable,
though it remains possible that the damping rate of warp in the disk could be
low enough to permit weakly coherent signals from Lense-Thirring precession.Comment: ApJ, in press. Minor revisions to match accepted version. Animations
showing warp evolution are available at
http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~armitage/lense_thirring.htm
Alignment Timescale of the Microquasar GRO J1655-40
The microquasar GRO J1655-40 has a black hole with spin angular momentum
apparently misaligned to the orbital plane of its companion star. We
analytically model the system with a steady state disc warped by Lense-Thirring
precession and find the timescale for the alignment of the black hole with the
binary orbit. We make detailed stellar evolution models so as to estimate the
accretion rate and the lifetime of the system in this state. The secondary can
be evolving at the end of the main sequence or across the Hertzsprung gap. The
mass-transfer rate is typically fifty times higher in the latter case but we
find that, in both cases, the lifetime of the mass transfer state is at most a
few times the alignment timescale. The fact that the black hole has not yet
aligned with the orbital plane is therefore consistent with either model. We
conclude that the system may or may not have been counter-aligned after its
supernova kick but that it is most likely to be close to alignment rather than
counteralignment now.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA
Massive planet migration: Theoretical predictions and comparison with observations
We quantify the utility of large radial velocity surveys for constraining
theoretical models of Type II migration and protoplanetary disk physics. We
describe a theoretical model for the expected radial distribution of extrasolar
planets that combines an analytic description of migration with an empirically
calibrated disk model. The disk model includes viscous evolution and mass loss
via photoevaporation. Comparing the predicted distribution to a uniformly
selected subsample of planets from the Lick / Keck / AAT planet search
programs, we find that a simple model in which planets form in the outer disk
at a uniform rate, migrate inward according to a standard Type II prescription,
and become stranded when the gas disk is dispersed, is consistent with the
radial distribution of planets for orbital radii 0.1 AU < a < 2.5 AU and planet
masses greater than 1.65 Jupiter masses. Some variant models are disfavored by
existing data, but the significance is limited (~95%) due to the small sample
of planets suitable for statistical analysis. We show that the favored model
predicts that the planetary mass function should be almost independent of
orbital radius at distances where migration dominates the massive planet
population. We also study how the radial distribution of planets depends upon
the adopted disk model. We find that the distribution can constrain not only
changes in the power-law index of the disk viscosity, but also sharp jumps in
the efficiency of angular momentum transport that might occur at small radii.Comment: ApJ, in press. References updated to match published versio
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