HEAD 2003 Meeting
Session 17. X-ray Binaries III
Poster, Sunday-Wednesday, March 23, 2003, Duration of Meeting

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[17.24] Accretion Disk Dynamos and Coronal Heating

E.T. Vishniac (Johns Hopkins University)

Dynamo activity in astrophysical plasmas is mediated by the magnetic helicity current. This is particularly true for accretion disks, where the dynamo is always in the nonlinear limit. I will present quasilinear estimates of the magnetic helicity current driven by the magnetorotational instability and the consequent magnetic dynamo growth rate. For comparison I will discuss similar results for other kinds of turbulence in shearing flows. Finally, I will discuss the implications of this work for energy generation in disk coronae.

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#2
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.