Waves and Instabilities in Accretion Disks: Magnetohydrodynamic Spectroscopic Analysis

A complete analytical and numerical treatment of all magnetohydrodynamic waves and instabilities for radially stratified, magnetized accretion disks is presented. The instabilities are a possible source of anomalous transport. While recovering results on known hydrodynamic and both weak- and strong-field magnetohydrodynamic perturbations, the full magnetohydrodynamic spectra for a realistic accretion disk model demonstrate a much richer variety of instabilities accessible to the plasma than previously realized. We show that both weakly and strongly magnetized accretion disks are prone to strong nonaxisymmetric instabilities. The ability to characterize all waves arising in accretion disks holds great promise for magnetohydrodynamic spectroscopic analysis.