Numerical Simulations of Jets from Accretion Disks

Hydromagnetic disk winds have great potential as a general theory for the production and collimation of astrophysical jets in both protostellar and black hole environments. We first review the analytic stationary theory of these outflows as well as recent numerical simulations of MHD disk winds. We then focus on simulations that we have done on winds from magnetized disks using the ZEUS 2-D code of Stone and Norman. We treat the Keplerian disk as a fixed platform throughout the simulations. We show that both stationary and episodic, jet-like outflows are driven from disks depending upon their magnetic structure and mass loss rates.