TY - JOUR
T1 - Resolution Dependence of Magnetorotational Turbulence in the Isothermal Stratified Shearing Box
AU - Ryan, Benjamin R.
AU - Gammie, Charles F.
AU - Fromang, Sebastien
AU - Kestener, Pierre
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
PY - 2017/5/1
Y1 - 2017/5/1
N2 - Magnetohydrodynamic turbulence driven by the magnetorotational instability can provide diffusive transport of angular momentum in astrophysical disks, and a widely studied computational model for this process is the ideal, stratified, isothermal shearing box. Here we report results of a convergence study of such boxes up to a resolution of N = 256 zones per scale height, performed on blue waters at NCSA with ramses-gpu. We find that the time and vertically integrated dimensionless shear stress α N-1/3, i.e., the shear stress is resolution dependent. We also find that the magnetic field correlation length decreases with resolution, λ ∼ N-1/2. This variation is strongest at the disk midplane. We show that our measurements of are consistent with earlier studies, and we discuss possible reasons for the lack of convergence.
AB - Magnetohydrodynamic turbulence driven by the magnetorotational instability can provide diffusive transport of angular momentum in astrophysical disks, and a widely studied computational model for this process is the ideal, stratified, isothermal shearing box. Here we report results of a convergence study of such boxes up to a resolution of N = 256 zones per scale height, performed on blue waters at NCSA with ramses-gpu. We find that the time and vertically integrated dimensionless shear stress α N-1/3, i.e., the shear stress is resolution dependent. We also find that the magnetic field correlation length decreases with resolution, λ ∼ N-1/2. This variation is strongest at the disk midplane. We show that our measurements of are consistent with earlier studies, and we discuss possible reasons for the lack of convergence.
KW - accretion, accretion disks
KW - magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)
KW - turbulence
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/aa6a52
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/aa6a52
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85019143454
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 840
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 1
M1 - 6
ER -