The Effect of Misalignment between Magnetic and Rotation Axes on Circumstellar Disk Properties

We study the formation of circumstellar disks using three-dimensional resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulations in which the initial prestellar cloud has a misaligned rotation axis with respect to the magnetic field. We examine the effects on disk formation of (i) the initial angle difference between the global magnetic field and the cloud rotation axis and (ii) the ratio of the thermal to gravitational energy. We study 16 models in total and calculate the cloud evolution until 5000 yr after protostar formation. Our simulation results indicate that an initial nonzero inclination angle promotes disk formation but tends to suppress the outflow driving, for models that are moderately gravitationally unstable with. In these models, a large-sized rotationally-supported disk forms and a weak outflow appears, in contrast to a smaller disk and strong outflow in the aligned case. Furthermore, we find that when the initial cloud is highly gravitationally unstable, the initial misalignment angle does not significantly affect the disk formation and outflow driving.