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Session 110 - X-ray, Binaries & Accretion Disks.
Display session, Saturday, January 10
Exhibit Hall,
Recent work on cooling waves in accretion disks has shown that the mechanism for generating angular momentum transport scales with the local geometry of the disk as \sim (H/r)^n, where n is approximately 3/2. If angular momentum transport is caused by local instabilities of the magnetic field, this implies a dynamo process which is both local and dependent on geometry. The incoherent \alpha-Ømega dynamo satisfies this criterion, since it arises from random fluctuations in the large scale helicity, creates axisymmetric magnetic domains, and is sensitive to the value of H/r through the height to circumference ratio of such domains. Here we explore the prospects for generating a quantitative agreement between the light curves of SXTs and dwarf novae and the predictions of this theory. We also discuss the constraints imposed by the current generation of numerical experiments.
