Precession of Magnetically Driven Warped Disks and Low-Frequency QPOs in Low-Mass X-Ray Binaries

Abstract

An accretion disk around a rotating magnetized star is subjected to magnetic torques which induce disk warping and precession. These torques arise from interactions between the stellar field and the induced surface currents on the disk. Applying these new effects to weakly magnetized ($B\sim 10^7-10^9$G) neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries, we study the global hydrodynamical warping/precession modes of the disk under the combined influences of relativistic frame dragging, classical precession due to the oblateness of the neutron star, and the magnetic torques. Under quite general conditions, the magnetic warping torque can overcome the ``Bardeen-Petterson'' viscous damping and makes the modes grow. The modes are confined to the inner region of the disk, and have frequencies close to the sum of the Lense-Thirring frequency, the classical precession frequency, and the magnetically driven precession frequency evaluated at the inner disk radius $r_{in}$. As $\dot M$ increases, the mode frequency is reduced relative to the total precession frequency at $r_{in}$ since the mode is less concentrated around $r_{in}$ due to the increasing viscous stress associated with the large $\dot M$. Because of this, and because the magnetically driven precession is retrograde and depends strongly on $\dot M$, the mode frequency can have a non-monotonic dependence on $\dot M$. This may account for several observed features of low-frequency (10--60 Hz) quasi-periodic oscillations (LFQPOs) in low-mass X-ray binaries which are otherwise difficult to explain, such as the flattening/turnover in the LFQPO frequency--$\dot M$ correlation or in the LFQPO frequency--kHz QPO frequency correlation (e.g., as seen clearly in GX 17+2).