45 research outputs found
Outflows From Evolved Stars: The Rapidly Changing Fingers Of CRL 618
Our ultimate goal is to probe the nature of the collimator of the outflows in the pre-planetary nebula CRL 618. CRL 618 is uniquely suited for this purpose owing to its multiple, bright, and carefully studied finger-shaped outflows east and west of its nucleus. We compare new Hubble Space Telescope images to images in the same filters observed as much as 11 yr ago to uncover large proper motions and surface brightness changes in its multiple finger-shaped outflows. The expansion age of the ensemble of fingers is close to 100 yr. We find strong brightness variations at the fingertips during the past decade. Deep IR images reveal a multiple ring-like structure of the surrounding medium into which the outflows propagate and interact. Tightly constrained three-dimensional hydrodynamic models link the properties of the fingers to their possible formation histories. We incorporate previously published complementary information to discern whether each of the fingers of CRL 618 are the results of steady, collimated outflows or a brief ejection event that launched a set of bullets about a century ago. Finally, we argue on various physical grounds that fingers of CRL 618 are likely to be the result of a spray of clumps ejected at the nucleus of CRL 618 since any mechanism that form a sustained set of unaligned jets is unprecedented.HST GO 11580NASA through Space Telescope Science Institute GO11580NASA NAS5-26555Boeing ScholarshipOffice of Undergraduate Academic Affairs at the University of WashingtonSpanish MICINN CSD2009-00038NASA Office of Space Science NAG5-7584Astronom
Comparing Poynting flux dominated magnetic tower jets with kinetic-energy dominated jets
Magnetic Towers represent one of two fundamental forms of MHD outflows.
Driven by magnetic pressure gradients, these flows have been less well studied
than magneto-centrifugally launched jets even though magnetic towers may well
be as common. Here we present new results exploring the behavior and evolution
of magnetic tower outflows and demonstrate their connection with pulsed power
experimental studies and purely hydrodynamic jets which might represent the
asymptotic propagation regimes of magneto-centrifugally launched jets.
High-resolution AMR MHD simulations (using the AstroBEAR code) provide insights
into the underlying physics of magnetic towers and help us constrain models of
their propagation. Our simulations have been designed to explore the effects of
thermal energy losses and rotation on both tower flows and their hydro
counterparts. We find these parameters have significant effects on the
stability of magnetic towers, but mild effects on the stability of hydro jets.
Current-driven perturbations in the Poynting Flux Dominated (PDF) towers are
shown to be amplified in both the cooling and rotating cases. Our studies of
the long term evolution of the towers show that the formation of weakly
magnetized central jets within the tower are broken up by these instabilities
becoming a series of collimated clumps which magnetization properties vary over
time. In addition to discussing these results in light of laboratory
experiments, we address their relevance to astrophysical observations of young
star jets and outflow from highly evolved solar type stars.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in the High Energy
Density Physics Journal corresponding to the proceedings of the 9th
International Conference on High Energy Density Laboratory Astrophysics, May
4, 2012, Tallahassee Florid
Interaction of Fanaroff-Riley class II radio jets with a randomly magnetised intra-cluster medium
A combination of three-dimensional (3D) magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) and
synthetic numerical simulations are presented to follow the evolution of a
randomly magnetised plasma that models the intra-cluster medium (ICM), under
the isolated effects of powerful, light, hypersonic and bipolar Fanaroff-Riley
class II (FR II) jets. We prescribe the cluster magnetic field (CMF) as a
Gaussian random field with a Kolmogorov-like energy spectrum. Both the power of
the jets and the viewing angle that is used for the synthetic Rotation Measure
(RM) observations are investigated. We find the model radio sources introduce
and amplify fluctuations on the RM statistical properties which we analyse as a
function of time as well as the viewing angle. The average RM and the RM
standard deviation are increased by the action of the jets. Energetics, RM
statistics and magnetic power spectral analysis consistently show that the
effects also correlate with the jets' power, and that the lightest, fastest
jets produce the strongest changes in their environment. We see jets distort
and amplify the CMFs especially near the edges of the lobes and the jets'
heads. This process leads to a flattening of the RM structure functions at
scales comparable to the source size. The edge features we find are similar to
ones observed in Hydra A. The results show that jet-produced RM enhancements
are more apparent in quasars than in radio galaxies. Globally, jets tend to
enhance the RM standard deviation which may lead to overestimations of the
CMFs' strength by about 70%. This study means to serve as a pathfinder for the
SKA, EVLA and LOFAR to follow the evolution of cosmic magnetic fields.Comment: Accepted for publication in the MNRAS. 21 pages, 15 figure
On the structure and stability of magnetic tower jets
Modern theoretical models of astrophysical jets combine accretion, rotation,
and magnetic fields to launch and collimate supersonic flows from a central
source. Near the source, magnetic field strengths must be large enough to
collimate the jet requiring that the Poynting flux exceeds the kinetic-energy
flux. The extent to which the Poynting flux dominates kinetic energy flux at
large distances from the engine distinguishes two classes of models. In
magneto-centrifugal launch (MCL) models, magnetic fields dominate only at
scales engine radii, after which the jets become
hydrodynamically dominated (HD). By contrast, in Poynting flux dominated (PFD)
magnetic tower models, the field dominates even out to much larger scales. To
compare the large distance propagation differences of these two paradigms, we
perform 3-D ideal MHD AMR simulations of both HD and PFD stellar jets formed
via the same energy flux. We also compare how thermal energy losses and
rotation of the jet base affects the stability in these jets. For the
conditions described, we show that PFD and HD exhibit observationally
distinguishable features: PFD jets are lighter, slower, and less stable than HD
jets. Unlike HD jets, PFD jets develop current-driven instabilities that are
exacerbated as cooling and rotation increase, resulting in jets that are
clumpier than those in the HD limit. Our PFD jet simulations also resemble the
magnetic towers that have been recently created in laboratory astrophysical jet
experiments.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, published in ApJ: ApJ, 757, 6
Numerical modelling of the lobes of radio galaxies in cluster environments II : Magnetic field configuration and observability
Copyright The Authors 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedWe describe three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamical modelling of powerful radio galaxies in realistic poor cluster environments. This modelling extends our earlier work on the hydrodynamics of radio galaxies as a function of their cluster environment to consider the magnetic field configuration in the lobes and its observational consequences, using a realistic model for the magnetic field in the intracluster medium, very high density contrast in the lobes and high numerical resolution. We confirm, now with a realistic magnetic field model, that lobes have characteristic trajectories in the radio power/linear size diagram which depend strongly on their environment. We investigate the detailed evolution of polarized emission, showing that the lobes evolve from the initially ordered field configuration imposed by our boundary conditions to one in which the longitudinal field comes to dominate. We obtain simulated observations of polarization whose properties are quantitatively consistent with observations. The highly spatially intermittent magnetic field also reproduces the observation that inverse-Compton emission from lobes is much smoother than synchrotron. Our simulations allow us to study the depolarizing effect of the external medium on the lobes, and so to demonstrate that Faraday depolarization from environments of the type we consider can reproduce the integrated fractional polarization properties of large samples and the observed preferential depolarization of the receding lobe.Peer reviewe
Three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the evolution of magnetic fields in Fanaroff-Riley class II radio sources
Radio observations of Fanaroff-Riley class II sources often show correlations
between the synchrotron emission and the linear-polarimetric distributions.
Magnetic position vectors seem to align with the projected emission of both the
radio jets and the sources' edges. Using statistics we study such relation as
well as its unknown time evolution via synthetic polarisation maps of model FR
II sources formed in 3D-MHD numerical simulations of bipolar, hypersonic and
weakly magnetised jets. The magnetic field is initially random with a
Kolmogorov power spectrum, everywhere. We investigate the structure and
evolution of magnetic fields in the sources as a function of the power of jets
and the observational viewing angle. Our synthetic polarisation maps agree with
observations, showing B-field vectors which are predominantly aligned with the
jet axis, and show that magnetic fields inside sources are shaped by the jets'
backflow. Polarimetry is found to correlate with time, the viewing angle and
the jet-to-ambient density contrast. The magnetic structure inside thin
elongated sources is more uniform than inside more spherical ones. We see jets
increase the magnetic energy in cocoons in proportion to the jet velocity and
the cocoon width. Filaments in the synthetic emission maps suggest turbulence
develops in evolved sources.Comment: Accepted for publication in the MNRAS. 21 pages, 11 figure
Superbubble dynamics in globular cluster infancy. I. How do globular clusters first lose their cold gas?
M. Krause1, C. Charbonnel, T. Decressin, G. Meynet, N. Prantzos, and R. Diehl, 'Superbubble dynamics in globular cluster infancy', Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 546, L5 (2012), the version of record is available online at DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201220244. Published by EDP Sciences. © ESO 2012.The picture of the early evolution of globular clusters has been significantly revised in recent years. Current scenarios require at least two generations of stars of which the first generation (1G), and therefore also the protocluster cloud, has been much more massive than the currently predominating second generation (2G). Fast gas expulsion is thought to unbind the majority of the 1G stars. Gas expulsion is also mandatory to remove metal-enriched supernova ejecta, which are not found in the 2G stars. It has long been thought that the supernovae themselves are the agent of the gas expulsion, based on crude energetics arguments. Here, we assume that gas expulsion happens via the formation of a superbubble, and describe the kinematics by a thin-shell model. We find that supernova-driven shells are destroyed by the Rayleigh-Taylor instability before they reach escape speed for all but perhaps the least massive and most extended clusters. More power is required to expel the gas, which might plausibly be provided by a coherent onset of accretion onto the stellar remnants. The resulting kpc-sized bubbles might be observable in Faraday rotation maps with the planned Square Kilometre Array radio telescope against polarised background radio lobes if a globular cluster would happen to form in front of such a radio lobe.Peer reviewe
From Bipolar to Elliptical: Simulating the Morphological Evolution of Planetary Nebulae
The majority of Proto-planetary nebulae (PPN) are observed to have bipolar
morphologies. The majority of mature PN are observed to have elliptical shapes.
In this paper we address the evolution of PPN/PN morphologies attempting to
understand if a transition from strongly bipolar to elliptical shape can be
driven by changes in the parameters of the mass loss process. To this end we
present 2.5D hydrodynamical simulations of mass loss at the end stages of
stellar evolution for intermediate mass stars. We track changes in wind
velocity, mass loss rate and mass loss geometry. In particular we focus on the
transition from mass loss dominated by a short duration jet flow (driven during
the PPN phase) to mass loss driven by a spherical fast wind (produced by the
central star of the PN). We address how such changes in outflow characteristics
can change the nebula from a bipolar to an elliptical morphology. Our results
show that including a period of jet formation in the temporal sequence of PPN
to PN produces realistic nebular synthetic emission geometries. More
importantly such a sequence provides insight, in principle, into the apparent
difference in morphology statistics characterizing PPN and PN systems. In
particular we find that while jet driven PPN can be expected to be dominated by
bipolar morphologies, systems that begin with a jet but are followed by a
spherical fast wind will evolve into elliptical nebulae. Furthermore, we find
that spherical nebulae are highly unlikely to ever derive from either bipolar
PPN or elliptical PN.Comment: Accepted for publication in the MNRAS, 15 pages, 7 figure