Assigned ID: 547 ----- Attempting Submission 1 (Fri Feb 25 19:37:03 GMT 2011) ----- The goal of this proposal is to study the structure and origin of jets from young stellar objects by using HST observations of T Tauri jets. To this end, we propose to use three different but complementary approaches: tomographic reconstruction to recover the jet velocity cross-section, numerical simulations to compare the predictions of jet ejection models with the observations, and a statistical analysis of the data. First, we plan to use standard tomographic reconstruction techniques to derive the cross-section (i.e. perpendicular to the jet axis) velocity and physical parameters (electron density, temperature and ionization fraction) of the jets. This will allow a reliable estimation of mass- and momentum-flux from the central star-disk system, which, together with the cross-sectional velocity constraints, will help to distinguish between different jet ejection models. Second, we will focus our study on understanding recent observations of stellar jets showing transverse velocity shifts in several emission lines. The origin of these velocity shift is still debated: they can be interpreted as evidence of rotation, or they can be originated by side-to-side asymmetries in the flow or in the ambient medium. To distinguish between these two scenarios, we plan to uncover the origin of transverse velocity shift by a statistical approach based on the presence (or absence) of correlations between the velocity shifts and the degree of asymmetries in the flow. Finally, we will use our adaptive mesh refinement code to compare the observations with a large number of numerical simulations constructed on different jet ejection mechanisms.

STAR FORMATION 12 Small false 0.0 0.0 false false false false SUPPORTED