Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
May 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21631605w&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #216, #316.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.896
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Scientific paper
The potential role of the magnetorotational instability (MRI) in the protostellar jet phenomenon is uncertain but intriguing. A number of works in theory and simulation have explored whether and how the MRI may be important to the processes of jet formation, powering, launching, and collimation. Not all of this work is directly related to protostellar jets, but much of it is.
Here, I do not discuss experiments that attempt to reproduce the magnetorotational instability in the laboratory. Rather, I discuss laboratory experiments on meridional flows in viscoelastic fluids and their relationship to MRI-driven jet flows, as I have previously. I argue that these laboratory experiments have much more to tell us about the nature of jets, and jets in protostars in particular.
To this end, I discuss briefly how these laboratory analogs of protostellar jets may posses a critical surface analogous to the transonic point in astrophysical jets. I show how the momentum flux and kinetic energy flux in the laboratory experiments may relate to these corresponding fluxes in protostellar jets, and I show how these fluxes depend upon the rotation speed of the central object. I discuss the differing roles of angular momentum transport in the laboratory and in astrophysical jets, and the salient differences between these two systems.
Finally, I argue that abandonment of a few common theoretical assumptions regarding the flow conditions in the jet launching region can lead to the hypothesis that a turbulent, thick accretion flow in protostars can produce jets without any magnetorotational acceleration whatsoever. Most importantly, the accretion flow must be hot and geometrically thick. To the extent that this is analogous to a very thick boundary layer, this contradicts the standard argument that accretion boundary layers must be relatively thin when they exist.
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