Negative superhumps are believed to arise in cataclysmic variable systems when the accretion disk is tilted with respect to the orbital plane .
Slow retrograde precession of the line-of-nodes results in a signal—the negative superhump—with a period slightly less than the orbital period .
Previous studies have shown that tilted disks exhibit negative superhumps , but a consensus on how a disk initially tilts has not been reached .
Analytical work by Lai suggests that a magnetic field on the primary can lead to a tilt instability in a disk when the dipole moment is offset in angle from the spin axis of the primary and when the primary ’ s spin axis is , itself , not aligned with the angular momentum axis of the binary orbit .
However , Lai did not apply his work to the formation of negative superhumps .
In this paper , we add Lai ’ s model to an existing smoothed particle hydrodynamics code .
Using this code , we demonstrate the emergence of negative superhumps in the “ light curve ” for a range of magnetic dipole moments .
We show that the period deficits calculated from these negative superhumps match those in simulations using manually tilted disks .
When positive superhumps appear ( q \lesssim 0.33 ) , we show that the period excesses calculated from these signals are also consistent with previous results .
Using examples , we show that the disks are tilted , though the tilt varies periodically , and that they precess in the retrograde direction .
The magnetic fields found to lead to the emergence of negative superhumps lie in the kilogauss regime .