Collaborative Research: Integrated Models of Star Formation

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

"Collaborative Research: Integrated Models of Star Formation" AST-0097910 Stellar winds play an essential role in removing excess angular momentum from a recently formed star. During this award there will be further development of some critical diagnostics for testing a model of winds driven by the magnetocentrifugal interaction of a strongly magnetized central star and its surrounding disk. The ultimate goal is to detect the co-existence of a wide-angle wind component and a highly collimated central jet which is predicted by the model. This is a Collaborative Research project in which two PI s share common interests in understanding the role of molecular clouds in star formation and whose scientific expertise is complementary. Frank Shu, at the University of California, Berkeley focuses more on the dynamical aspects of the outflow while Alfred Glassgold, at New York University, pays more attention to the microscopic physics. Loose collaborations have been established with observers in order to be able to make detailed comparisons of the models with the spectroscopic observations of the collimated outflows.