The Kozai-Lidov Mechanism in Hydrodynamical Disks

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates through 3D hydrodynamical simulations that misaligned accretion disks in binary systems can undergo Kozai-Lidov cycles, affecting their inclination and eccentricity periodically, with broad astrophysical implications.

Contribution

It is the first to show that hydrodynamical disks can exhibit Kozai-Lidov cycles, expanding understanding of disk dynamics in binary systems.

Findings

Disks can undergo periodic inclination and eccentricity exchanges.

Kozai-Lidov cycles occur in hydrodynamical disks, not just rigid bodies.

Implications for planet formation, X-ray binaries, and black hole accretion.

Abstract

We use three dimensional hydrodynamical simulations to show that a highly misaligned accretion disk around one component of a binary system can exhibit global Kozai-Lidov cycles, where the inclination and eccentricity of the disk 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 disks, outbursts in X-ray binary systems and accretion on to supermassive black holes.