Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2016
Flare activity on the sun may be attributed to the distortion of coronal magnetic field caused primarily by vortical (Shearing) photospheric motion. If an accretion disk is permeated by a magnetic field, the strong differential rotation of the disk will lead to similar stressing of the magnetosphere, and one may expect similar flare activity to occur. It is likely that the density of plasma in the maganetosphere is sufficiently large that the “frozen flux” condition is satisfied, and sufficiently small that the magnetic field will be substantially in the force-free state.