Astrophysical Jets as Hypersonic Buckshot: Laboratory Experiments and Simulations

Details Astrophysical Jets as Hypersonic Buckshot: Laboratory Experiments and Simulations Astrophysical Jets as Hypersonic Buckshot: Laboratory Experiments and Simulations

Aug 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009rmxac..36..193f&link_type=abstract

Magnetic Fields in the Universe II: From Laboratory and Stars to the Primordial Universe (Eds. A. Esquivel, J. Franco, G. García

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3

Ism: Jets And Outflows, Stars: Mass Loss, Stars: Pre-Main Sequence

Scientific paper

Herbig-Haro (HH) jets are commonly thought of as homogeneous beams of plasma traveling at hypersonic velocities. Structure within jet beams is often attributed to periodic or ``pulsed'' variations of conditions at the jet source. In this contribution we offer an alternative to ``pulsed'' models of protostellar jets. Using direct numerical simulations and laboratory experiments we explore the possibility that jets are chains of sub-radial clumps propagating through a moving inter-clump medium. Our simulations explore an idealization of this scenario by injecting small (r < r_{jet}), dense (rho > rho_{jet}) spheres embedded in an otherwise smooth inter-clump jet flow. The spheres are initialized with velocities differing from the jet velocity by ˜ 15%. We find the consequences of shifting from homogeneous to heterogeneous flows are significant as clumps interact with each other and with the inter-clump medium in a variety of ways. We also present new experiments that, for the first time, directly address issues of magnetized astrophysical jets. Our experiments explore the propagation and stability of super-magnetosonic, radiatively cooled, and magnetically dominated bubbles with internal, narrow jets. The results are scalable to astrophysical environments via the similarity of dimensionless numbers controlling the dynamics in both settings. These experiments show the jets are subject to kink mode instabilities which quickly fragment the jet into narrow chains of hypersonic knots, providing support for the ``clumpy jet'' paradigm.

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