2006/08/28 by Z. B. Etienne, Zachariah B. Etienne, Yuk Tung Liu +1 · 29 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Classical mechanics #Computational physics #Differential rotation #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Instability #Magnetic field #Magnetohydrodynamics #Magnetorotational instability #Mechanics #Neutron star #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Rotation (mathematics) #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.74.044030
published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 74(4) (American Physical Society) · 21 pages, 11 figures, published in Phys.Rev.D
openalex publication_date 2006/08/28 · arxiv created 2006/09/22 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present long-term (\ensuremath∼104M) axisymmetric simulations of differentially rotating, magnetized neutron stars in the slow-rotation, weak magnetic field limit using a perturbative metric evolution technique. Although this approach yields results comparable to those obtained via nonperturbative (BSSN) evolution techniques, simulations performed with the perturbative metric solver require about 1/4 the computational resources at a given resolution. This computational efficiency enables us to observe and analyze the effects of magnetic braking and the magnetorotational instability (MRI) at very high resolution. Our simulations demonstrate that (1) MRI is not observed unless the fastest-growing mode wavelength is resolved by \ensuremath\gtrsim10 gridpoints; (2) as resolution is improved, the MRI growth rate converges, but due to the small-scale turbulent nature of MRI, the maximum growth amplitude increases, but does not exhibit convergence, even at the highest resolution; and (3) independent of resolution, magnetic braking drives the star toward uniform rotation as energy is sapped from differential rotation by winding magnetic fields.