Title: Protostellar Jets and Winds

Speaker: Frank Shu (UC Berkeley)

Abstract:
The birth of sunlike stars seems alway accompanied by the
simultaneous presence of inflow and outflow.
We explain this perplexing phenomenon in terms of the
angular momentum transfer that occurs when matter from
an accretion disk tries to join onto a strongly magnetized central
star.  We describe the physical properties of the so-called
x-wind that arises from the resulting magnetocentrifugal
interaction, and we argue that the forbidden-line properties of
protostellar jets are in some sense optical illusions.
We present synthetic images and long-slit spectra that
demonstrate this point.  We also give a simplified calculation
of the interaction of the x-wind with the surrounding molecular
cloud core, and we compare the results with observed bipolar
molecular outflows.