Protostellar Jets: The Best Laboratories for Investigating Astrophysical Jets

Highly collimated supersonic jets are observed to emerge from a wide variety of astrophysical objects, ranging from Active Nuclei of Galaxies (AGN's) to Young Stellar Objects (YSOs) within our own Galaxy. Despite their different physical scales (in size, velocity, and amount of energy transported), they have strong morphological similarities. Thanks to the proximity and relatively small timescales, which permit direct observations of evolutionary changes, YSO jets are, perhaps, the best laboratories for cosmic jet investigation. In this lecture, the formation, structure, and evolution of the YSO jets are reviewed with the help of observational information, MHD and purely hydrodynamical modeling, and numerical simulations. Possible applications of the models to AGN jets are also addressed.Comment: 19 pages, PostScript (9 figures upon request). Invited review for proceedings of the International Conference on Plasma Physics (Foz do Iguassu, November 1994) eds. P. Sakanaka et al

Particle Acceleration by Magnetic Reconnection

Observational data require a rich variety of mechanisms to accelerate fast particles in astrophysical environments operating under different conditions. The mechanisms discussed in the literature include varying magnetic fields in compact sources, stochastic processes in turbulent environments, and acceleration behind shocks. An alternative, much less explored mechanism involves particle acceleration within magnetic reconnection sites. In this chapter we discuss this mechanism and show that particles can be efficiently accelerated by reconnection through a first order Fermi process within large scale current sheets (specially when in the presence of local turbulence which speeds up the reconnection and make the acceleration region thicker) and also through a second order Fermi process in pure MHD turbulent environments.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1103.2984, arXiv:1202.5256, arXiv:1008.1981 by other author

Evolution of the ISM of Starburst galaxies: the SN heating efficiency

The interstellar medium heated by SN explosions may acquire an expansion velocity larger than the escape velocity and leave the galaxy through a supersonic wind. SN ejecta are transported out of the galaxies by such winds which thus affect the chemical evolution of the galaxies. The effectiveness of the processes mentioned above depends on the heating efficiency (HE) of the SNe, that is a matter of debate. We have constructed a simple semi-analytic model, considering the essential ingredients of a SB environment which is able to qualitatively trace the thermalisation history of the ISM in a SB region and determine the HE evolution. We find that, as long as the mass-loss rate of the clouds remains larger than the rate at which the SNRs interact one with each other, the SN heating efficiency remains very small, as radiative cooling of the gas dominates. We conclude that the HE value has a time-dependent trend that is sensitive to the initial conditions of the system.Comment: 17 pages, 18 figures, A&A accepte