paper

Jets and outflows of massive protostars - From cloud collapse to jet launching and cloud dispersal

arXiv:1811.07009 · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201833686

Abstract

In a comprehensive convergence study, we investigate the computational conditions necessary to resolve disk formation and jet-launching processes, and analyze possible caveats. We explore the magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) processes of the collapse of massive prestellar cores in detail, including an analysis of the forces involved and their temporal evolution for up to two free-fall times. We conduct MHD simulations, combining nonideal MHD, self-gravity, and very high resolutions as they have never been achieved before. Our setup includes a 100 Msol cloud core that collapses under its own self-gravity to self-consistently form a dense disk structure and launch tightly collimated magneto-centrifugal jets and wide-angle winds. Our high-resolution simulations can resolve a magneto-centrifugal jet and a magnetic pressure-driven outflow, separately. The nature of the outflows depends critically on spatial resolution. Only high-resolution simulations are able to differentiate a magneto-centrifugally launched, highly collimated jet from a slow wide-angle magnetic-pressure-driven tower flow. Of these two outflow components, the tower flow dominates angular-momentum transport. The mass outflow rate is dominated by the entrained material from the interaction of the jet with the stellar environment and only part of the ejected medium is directly launched from the accretion disk. A tower flow can only develop to its full extent when much of the original envelope has already dispersed. Taking into account both the mass launched from the surface of the disk and the entrained material from the envelope, we find an ejection-to-accretion efficiency of 10%. Nonideal MHD is required to form centrifugally supported accretion disks and the disk size is strongly dependent on spatial resolution.

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