Forced oscillations in magnetized accretion disks and QPOs

Abstract

We propose a new model for these QPOs based on forced oscillations induced in the accretion disk due to the stellar magnetic field. First, it is shown that a magnetized accretion disk evolving in a rotating nonaxisymmetric magnetic field anchored to a neutron star will be subject to three kinds of resonances: a corotation resonance, a Lindblad resonance due to a driving force, and a parametric resonance due to the time varying epicyclic frequencies. In the second part of the paper, we focus on the linear response of a thin accretion disk, developing the density perturbation as the sum of free wave solutions and non-wavelike disturbances. In the last part, we show results of 2D numerical simulations of a simplified version of the accretion disk consisting of a column of plasma threaded by a vertical magnetic field. It is argued that the nearly periodic motion induced in the disk will produce high quality factor QPOs.