Physical origin of disk tilt

Identify the physical mechanism responsible for producing the tilt of accretion disks in cataclysmic variables and related accreting compact binaries.

Background

Negative superhumps are widely interpreted as signatures of retrograde nodal precession in a tilted accretion disk, but the process that creates the tilt is unresolved. The paper reviews several proposed mechanisms, including magnetic effects from the secondary, irradiation by the primary, spin–disk misalignment, and tidal interactions, without establishing which mechanism operates generally.

References

Although the tilted-disk interpretation of nSHs is widely accepted, the physical mechanism responsible for producing the disk tilt remains unclear.

— Dynamically driven collapse of a thermally stable accretion disk in a nova-like system  (2608.27878 - Li et al., 28 Aug 2026) in Section 1, Introduction

The physical mechanism responsible for the transition from an eccentric disk to a tilted disk remains poorly understood.

— Dynamically driven collapse of a thermally stable accretion disk in a nova-like system  (2608.27878 - Li et al., 28 Aug 2026) in Section 3.3, Discussion, “A dynamics-driven morphological cycle of the accretion disk,” stage C

Establishing whether this magnetic torque is responsible for the tilt requires a direct angular-momentum budget that also accounts for the accretion of misaligned angular momentum.

— Magnetically Driven Obliquity in Circumplanetary Disks and Twisted Bipolar-jet Formation  (2609.10035 - Chametla et al., 9 Sep 2026) in Section 5.1, “Tilted CPD driven by the global toroidal magnetic field development”