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Updated: Dec 20, 2025

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Magnetically Advected Winds
I Contopoulos1,2, D Kazanas3, K Fukumura4
1Research Centre for Astronomy and Applied Mathematics, Academy of Athens, Athens 11527, Greece.
Abstract:
Observations of X-ray absorption lines in magnetically driven disc winds around black hole binaries and active galactic nuclei yield a universal radial density profile in the wind. This is in disagreement with the standard Blandford & Payne profile expected when the magnetic field is neither advected nor diffusing through the accretion disc. In order to account for this discrepancy, we establish a new paradigm for magnetically driven astrophysical winds according to which the large scale ordered magnetic field that threads the disc is continuously generated by the Cosmic Battery around the inner edge of the disc and continuously diffuses outward. We obtain self-similar solutions of such magnetically advected winds (MAW) and discuss their observational ramifications.
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