A Tale of Two Disks: How initial conditions influence magnetic field evolution in accretion disks

Magnetic fields play an important role in the evolution of accretion disk systems, but the growth and evolution of these fields is a subtle issue with many open questions and unknown factors. In this talk, I present results from two fully-3D, MHD, long-timescale simulations of relatively thick disks (h/r ~ 0.25), with initially-toroidal magnetic fields of plasma beta 5 and 200, respectively. We show that these systems evolve along different paths and exhibit quantitatively different structure, with measurable differences in black hole threading flux and magnetic field coherency, suggesting that the choice of initial magnetic field strength and morphology has important implications for disk evolution within simulations. We conclude with a discussion on the importance of setting physically-appropriate initial conditions in disk simulations, and the need for the inclusion of disk feeding within our models.