The Kozai-Lidov mechanism in hydrodynamical discs

Rebecca G. Martin, Chris Nixon, Stephen H. Lubow, Philip J. Armitage, Daniel J. Price, Suzan Doğan and Andrew King

full text pdf, accepted to ApJL 11th August 2014

Abstract

We use three dimensional hydrodynamical simulations to show that a highly misaligned accretion disc around one component of a binary system can exhibit global Kozai-Lidov cycles, where the inclination and eccentricity of the disc are interchanged periodically. This has important implications for accreting systems on all scales, for example, the formation of planets and satellites in circumstellar and circumplanetary discs, outbursts in X-ray binary systems and accretion on to supermassive black holes.

Movies	Movies and images (c) 2014 Daniel Price and Rebecca Martin, released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. [directory listing of all movies here]
	Movie showing accretion disc in a binary system undergoing Kozai-Lidov cycles (i.e. periodic exchanges of inclination for eccentricity). Movie is in the frame of the primary star.
	Movie showing accretion disc in a binary system undergoing Kozai-Lidov cycles (i.e. periodic exchanges of inclination for eccentricity). Movie rotates to maintain an edge-on view of the disc.
	Movie showing accretion disc in a binary system undergoing Kozai-Lidov cycles (i.e. periodic exchanges of inclination for eccentricity). Movie is in the centre of mass frame.
	Movie showing accretion disc in a binary system undergoing Kozai-Lidov cycles (i.e. periodic exchanges of inclination for eccentricity). Movie is so that disc starts horizontal.