Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Jan 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21710401b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #104.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Scientific paper
High resolution X-ray spectroscopy of accreting young stars is providing new insights into the physical conditions of the shocked plasma. While young stars exhibit exceedingly active coronae (>10 MK) with highly energetic flares, the relatively low temperature ( 3 MK), high density (>1012 cm-3) accretion shock can only be clearly distinguished at high spectral resolution. The nearby Classical T Tauri star TW Hydrae was the first to show evidence of accretion using 50 ks with the Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating (HETG). More recently a Chandra HETG Large Program
(489 ks obtained over the course of one month) on TW Hydrae has found evidence for a new type of coronal structure. In the standard model, the accreting gas shocks near the atmosphere of the star and gently settles onto the surface as it slows down and cools. On TW Hydrae the observed post-shock region is not this predicted settling flow, since its mass is 30 times the mass of material that passes through the shock. Instead the stellar atmosphere must be heated to soft X-ray emitting temperatures. Of the CTTS systems observed with the gratings on Chandra and XMM-Newton not all show the accretion shock signature; however, all of them show excess soft X-ray emission related to accretion. The production of highly charged ions in the proximity of both open and closed magnetic field lines has important implications for coronal heating, winds and jets in the presence of accretion. This work is supported by the Chandra X-ray Observatory through a NASA contract with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
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