Assistant Professor at the University of Birmingham
Magnetized stars disruption
The two movies below illustrate the results of this paper that studies the tidal disruption of magnetized stars with numerical simulations. In both movies, the disruption is partial meaning that a self-gravitating core survives the encounter with the black hole. The camera follows the center of mass of the gas distribution. The first movie indicates the magnetic field strength with colours, increasing from blue to yellow. The second one shows the magnetic field lines with iron filings. During the formation of the self-gravitating core, vortices form within which the magnetic field strength gets amplified (first movie) and magnetic field lines become tangled (second movie).