Modeling YSO Jets in 3D IV: Stress-Testing Disk–Magnetosphere Jet Launching with a Tilted Stellar Magnetosphere 5 views

Jets and outflows are a fundamental component of star formation, regulating accretion and angular momentum transport in young stellar objects (YSOs). Recent three-dimensional non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations have shown that powerful YSO jets can be launched self-consistently through interactions between the inner circumstellar disk and an aligned stellar magnetosphere, producing collimated, Poynting-flux-dominated outflows driven by toroidal magnetic pressure. However, observations indicate that stellar magnetospheres in accreting YSOs are often tilted relative to the stellar rotation axis, raising questions about the robustness of this jet-launching mechanism under broken axisymmetry. To address this, we extend aligned disk-magnetosphere models by introducing a tilted stellar dipole and treating misalignment as a controlled stress test of the jet-launching process. Using three-dimensional non-ideal MHD simulations with tilt angles of 30º, 60º, and 90º, we investigate how magnetospheric tilt influences jet launching, magnetic flux opening, mass loading, and collimation. We find that strong, well-collimated jets persist for moderate tilt, with jet power and structure comparable to the aligned case, while extreme misalignment significantly weakens the jet by reducing the open magnetic flux available to drive the outflow. These results demonstrate that disk-magnetosphere interaction can robustly launch jets under realistic levels of star-disk misalignment, while also identifying geometric limits beyond which the mechanism becomes inefficient.

BS (Bachelor of Science)

Magnetohydrodynamics; Young Stellar Objects; Jets; Stellar Magnetospheres; Magnetic Fields; Stellar Outflows

English

2026-05-08