Disk Winds and Planetary Nebulae I . Existence and Applicability of Solutions

Winds from accretion disks have been proposed as the driving source for precessing jets and extreme bipolar morphologies in Planetary Nebulae (PNe) and proto-PNe (pPNe). In this paper we address the applicability of self-consistent MHD disk wind models to PNe and pPNe. We first review the basic features of magneto-centrifugal launching disk wind models adapting results from previously published non-self similar calculations of Peltier & Pudritz (1992). We then estimate the relevant conditions which should occur in PNe and pPNe accretion disks that form via binary interactions. Finally, examining conditions on dimensionless parameters needed for magneto-centrifugal disk wind models we show that such winds can recover the observed momentum and energy input rates for PNe and pPNe. High accretion rates are required in the latter case (M a ≈ 10 −4 M ⊙ yr −1) and we find that the observed total energy and momentum in pPNe can be recovered with disk wind models using existing disk formation scenarios.