  The inner region of the accretion disk onto a rotating magnetized central
star (neutron star, white dwarf or T Tauri star) is subjected to magnetic
torques which induce warping and precession of the disk. The origin of these
torques lies in the interaction between the (induced) surface current on the
disk and the horizontal magnetic field (parallel to the disk) produced by the
inclined magnetic dipole. Under quite general conditions, there exists a
magnetic warping instability in which the magnetic torque drives the disk plane
away from the equatorial plane of the star toward a state where the disk normal
vector is perpendicular to the spin axis. Viscous stress tends to suppress the
warping instability at large radii, but the magnetic torque always dominates as
the disk approaches the magnetosphere boundary. The magnetic torque also drives
the tilted inner disk into retrograde precession around the stellar spin axis.
Moreover, resonant magnetic forcing on the disk can occur which may affect the
dynamics of the disk. The magnetically driven warping instability and
precession may be related to a number observational puzzles, including: (1)
Spin evolution (torque reversal) of accreting X-ray pulsars; (2) Quasi-periodic
oscillations in low-mass X-ray binaries; (3) Super-orbital periods in X-ray
binaries; (4) Photometric period variations of T Tauri stars.

Astrophysics