Work

Protostellar Outflow Evolution in Turbulent Environments

Year: 2009

Type: article

Abstract: The link between turbulence in star-forming environments and protostellar jets remains controversial. To explore issues of turbulence and fossil cavities driven by young stellar outflows, we present a series of numerical simulations tracking the evolution of transient protostellar jets driven into a turbulent medium. Our simulations show both the effect of turbulence on outflow structures and, conversely, the effect of outflows on the ambient turbulence. We demonstrate how turbulence will lead to strong modifications in jet morphology. More importantly, we demonstrate that individual transient outflows have the capacity to re-energize decaying turbulence. Our simulations support a scenario in which the directed energy/momentum associated with cavities is randomized as the cavities are disrupted by dynamical instabilities seeded by the ambient turbulence. Consideration of the energy power spectra of the simulations reveals that the disruption of the cavities powers an energy cascade consistent with Burgers'-type turbulence and produces a driving scale length associated with the cavity propagation length. We conclude that fossil cavities interacting either with a turbulent medium or with other cavities have the capacity to sustain or create turbulent flows in star-forming environments. In the last section, we contrast our work and its conclusions with previous studies which claim that jets cannot be the source of turbulence.

Source: The Astrophysical Journal

DOI: 10.1088/0004-637x/692/1/816

Authors: Andrew J. Cunningham, Adam Frank, Jonathan Carroll, Eric G. Blackman, Alice C. Quillen

Institutions: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of Rochester

Language: English

Topic: Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies

Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: bronze