A Revised Prescription for the Tayler-Spruit Dynamo: Magnetic Angular Momentum Transport in Stars

Angular momentum transport by internal magnetic fields is an important ingredient for stellar interior models. In this paper we critically examine the basic heuristic assumptions in the model of the Tayler-Spruit dynamo, which describes how a pinch-type instability of a toroidal magnetic field in differentially rotating stellar radiative zones may result in large-scale fluid motion. We agree with prior published work both on the existence of the instability and its nearly horizontal geometry for perturbations. However, the approximations in the original Acheson dispersion relation are valid only for small length scales, and we disagree that the dispersion relation can be extrapolated to horizontal length scales of order the radius of the star. We contend that dynamical effects, in particular, angular momentum conservation, limit the maximum horizontal length scale. We therefore present transport coefficients for chemical mixing and angular momentum redistribution by magnetic torques that are significantly different from previous published values. The new magnetic viscosity is reduced by 2-3 orders of magnitude compared to the old one, and we find that magnetic angular momentum transport by this mechanism is very sensitive to gradients in the mean molecular weight. The revised coefficients are more compatible with empirical constraints on the timescale of core-envelope coupling in young stars than the previous ones. However, solar models including only this mechanism possess a rapidly rotating core, in contradiction with helioseismic data. Previous studies had found strong core-envelope coupling, both for solar models and for the cores of massive evolved stars. We conclude that the Tayler-Spruit mechanism may be important for envelope angular momentum transport but that some other process must be responsible for efficient spin-down of stellar cores.