Magnetic collimation and magnetohydrodynamic kink instability driven by differential rotation

We investigate the launching and stability of extragalactic jets through magnetohydrodynamic simulations of jet evolution. In these simulations, a small scale equilibrium magnetic corona is twisted by a differentially rotating accretion disk. Two-dimensional calculations show the formation of a collimated outflow. This outflow is divided into two regions by the Alfvén surface: a magnetically dominated Poynting region, and a kinetically dominated region. Three-dimensional calculations show that the outflow is unstable to the m = 1 kink instability, and that the growth rate of the kink instability decreases as the rotation rate of the accretion disk increases.