Mathematics
Scientific paper
Jul 2000
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000phdt........12s&link_type=abstract
PhD Thesis, Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Potsdam
Mathematics
24
Scientific paper
The presence of outflows, often in the form of well-collimated jets, is a phenomenon commonly associated with the birth of young stars. Emission from shock-excited molecular hydrogen at near-infrared wavelengths is one of the signposts of the presence of such an outflow, and generally can be observed even if the flow is obscured at optical wavelengths. In this thesis, I present the results of an unbiased, sensitive, wide-field search for flows from protostellar objects in the v=1-0 S(1) line at a wavelength of 2.12 μm, covering a 1 square degree area of the Orion A giant molecular cloud. Further data covering a wide wavelength range are used to search for the driving sources of the flows. The aim of this work is to obtain a sample of outflows which is free from biases as far as possible, to derive the typical properties of the outflows, to search for evolutionary trends, and to examine the impact of outflows on the ambient cloud. The first result from this survey is that outflows are indeed common in star forming regions: more than 70 candidate jets are identified. Most of them have a fairly ill-defined morphology rather than a regular or symmetric structure, which is interpreted to be due to the turbulent, clumpy ambient medium into which the jets are propagating. The jets are randomly oriented. In particular, no alignment of the jets with the large scale ambient magnetic field is found, suggesting that the spin and symmetry axis in a protostellar object is determined by random, turbulent motions in the cloud. Candidate driving sources are identified for 49 jets, and their evolutionary stage and bolometric luminosity is estimated. The jet lengths and H2 luminosities evolve as a function of the age of the driving source: the jets grow quickly from zero length to a size of a few parsec and then slowly shorten again. The jets are very luminous early on and fade during the protostellar evolution. The evolution in length and H2 luminosity is attributed to an early phase of strong accretion, which subsequently decreases. The shortening of the jets with time requires the presence of a continuous deceleration of the jets. A simple model of the simultaneous evolution of a protostar, its circumstellar environment, and its outflow ( Smith 2000 ) can reproduce the measured values of H2 luminosity and driving source luminosity under the assumption of a strong accretion plus high ejection efficiency phase early in the protostellar evolution. Tatematsu et al. (1993) found 125 dense cloud cores in the survey area. The jet driving sources are found to have formed predominantly in quiet cores with a low ratio of internal kinetic energy to gravitational potential energy; these are the cores with higher masses. The cores which are associated with jets have on average larger linewidths than cores without jets. This is due to the preferred presence of jets in more massive cores, which generally have larger linewidths. There is no evidence for additional internal motions excited by the interaction of the jets with the cores. The jet H2 luminosity and the core linewidth (as predicted by theory) are related, if Class 0 and Class I jets are considered separately; the relation lies at higher values of the H2 luminosity for the Class 0 jets than for Class I jets. This also suggests a time evolution of the accretion rate, with a strong peak early on and a subsequent decay. Finally, the impact of a protostellar jet population on a molecular cloud is considered. Under the conservative assumption of strict forward momentum conservation, the jets appear to fail to provide sufficient momentum to replenish decaying turbulence on the scales of a giant molecular cloud and on the scales of molecular cloud cores. At the intermediate scales of molecular clumps with sizes of a few parsec and masses of a few hundred solar masses, the jets provide enough momentum in a short enough time to potentially replenish turbulence and thus might help to stabilize the clump against further collapse.
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