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Accretion-powered Stellar Winds. III. Spin-Equilibrium Solutions

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Sean Matt1 and Ralph E. Pudritz2

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We compare the stellar wind torque calculated in a previous work (Paper II) to the spin-up and spin-down torques expected to arise from the magnetic interaction between a slowly rotating (~10% of breakup) pre-main-sequence star and its accretion disk. This analysis demonstrates that stellar winds can carry off orders of magnitude more angular momentum than can be transferred to the disk, provided that the mass outflow rates are substantially greater than the solar wind. Thus, the equilibrium spin state is simply characterized by a balance between the angular momentum deposited by accretion and that extracted by a stellar wind. We derive a semianalytic formula for predicting the equilibrium spin rate as a function only of the ratio of dot Mw/dot Ma and a dimensionless magnetization parameter, Ψ ≡ B2*R2*(dot Mavesc)−1, where dot Mw is the stellar wind mass outflow rate, dot Ma is the accretion rate, B* is the stellar surface magnetic field strength, R* is the stellar radius, and vesc is the surface escape speed. For parameters typical of accreting pre-main-sequence stars, this explains spin rates of ~10% of breakup speed for dot Mw/dot Ma ~ 0.1. Finally, the assumption that the stellar wind is driven by a fraction of the accretion power leads to an upper limit to the mass flow ratio of dot Mw/dot Ma lesssim 0.6.

Subject headings

accretion, accretion disks; MHD; stars: magnetic fields; stars: pre-main sequence; stars: rotation; stars: winds, outflows


Dates

Issue 1 (2008 July 1)

Received 2007 October 25, accepted for publication 2008 February 11



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