Paper detail

Effects of Turbulence on Cosmic Ray Propagation in Protostars and Young Star/Disk Systems

The magnetic fields associated with young stellar objects are expected to have an hour-glass geometry, i.e., the magnetic field lines are pinched as they thread the equatorial plane surrounding the forming star but merge smoothly onto a background field at large distances. With this field configuration, incoming cosmic rays experience both a funneling effect that acts to enhance the flux impinging on the circumstellar disk and a magnetic mirroring effect that acts to reduce that flux. To leading order, these effects nearly cancel out for simple underlying magnetic field structures. However, the environments surrounding young stellar objects are expected to be highly turbulent. This paper shows how the presence of magnetic field fluctuations affects the process of magnetic mirroring, and thereby changes the flux of cosmic rays striking circumstellar disks. Turbulence has two principle effects: 1) The (single) location of the magnetic mirror point found in the absence of turbulence is replaced with a wide distribution of values. 2) The median of the mirror point distribution moves outward for sufficiently large fluctuation amplitudes (roughly when $δB/B_0>0.2$ at the location of the turbulence-free mirror point); the distribution becomes significantly non-gaussian in this regime as well. These results may have significant consequences for the ionization fraction of the disk, which in turn dictates the efficiency with which disk material can accrete onto the central object. A similar reduction in cosmic ray flux can occur during the earlier protostellar stages; the decrease in ionization can help alleviate the magnetic braking problem that inhibits disk formation.