Helical Magnetic Field in a Massive Protostellar Jet

Abstract

Highly collimated outflows (jets) are observed across a wide range of astrophysical systems involving the accretion of material onto central objects, from supermassive black holes in active galaxies to proto-brown dwarfs and stellar-mass black holes. Despite the diversity of their driving sources, it is believed that all jets are different manifestations of a single universal phenomenon. However, a unified explanation for their ejection and collimation remains elusive. In this study we present the first rotation measure analysis of the polarized synchrotron emission ever performed in a protostellar radio jet, which allows us to reveal its true 3D magnetic structure. Unlike extragalactic radio jets, which often exhibit faint counterjets, protostellar radio jets allow both the jet and the counterjet to be analyzed. This exceptional circumstance allows us to unveil the magnetic field structure of both components. Our findings provide the first solid evidence for a helical magnetic field within a protostellar jet, supporting the universality of the jet collimation mechanism.

8 pages, 3 figures. Published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 978, Number 2

References in corpus (16)

• MOJAVE: Monitoring of Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei with VLBA Experiments. VIII. Faraday rotation in parsec-scale AGN jets
• A Magnetized Jet from a Massive Protostar
• Faraday rotation and polarization gradients in the jet of 3C~120: Interaction with the external medium and a helical magnetic field?
• The Role of Magnetic Fields in Protostellar Outflows and Star Formation
• Are Spine--Sheath Polarization Structures in the Jets of Active Galactic Nuclei Associated with Helical Magnetic Fields?
• Reading M87's DNA: A Double Helix revealing a large scale Helical Magnetic Field
• The Highly Collimated Radio Jet of HH 80-81: Structure and Non-Thermal Emission
• Tentative Evidence for Relativistic Electrons Generated by the Jet of the Young Sun-like Star DG Tau
• The Cosmic Battery Revisited
• Protostellar Outflows at the EarliesT Stages (POETS). II. A possible radio synchrotron jet associated with the EGO G035.02+0.35
• Parsec Scale Faraday-Rotation Structure Across the Jets of 9 Active Galactic Nuclei
• Modeling the accretion disk around the high-mass protostar GGD 27-MM1
• A search for non-thermal radio emission from jets of massive young stellar objects
• Detection of non-thermal emission from the massive protostellar jet HH80-81 at low radio frequencies using GMRT
• Simulations of the Poynting--Robertson Cosmic Battery in Resistive Accretion Disks
• Message in a Bottle: Unveiling the Magneto-Ionic Complexity of AGNs through the Stokes QU-Fitting Technique