Precessing Jets and Molecular Outflows: A 3-D Numerical Study

Abstract

We present 3-D numerical hydrodynamical simulations of precessing supersonic heavy jets to explore how well they serve as a model for generating molecular outflows from Young Stellar Objects. The dynamics are studied with a number of high resolution simulations on a Cartesian grid (128x128x128 zones) using a high order finite difference method. A range of cone angles and precession rates were included in the study. Two higher resolution runs (256x256x256 zones) were made for comparison in order to confirm numerical convergence of global flow characteristics. Morphological, kinematical and dynamical characteristics of precessing jets are described and compared to important properties of straight jets and also to observations of YSOs. In order to examine the robustness of precessing jets as a mean to produce molecular outflows around Young Stellar Objects, ``synthetic observations'' of the momentum distributions of the simulated precessing jets are compared to observations of molecular outflows. It is found that precessing jets match better the morphology, highly forward driven momentum and momentum distributions along the long axis of molecular outflows than do wind-driven or straight jet-driven flow models.Comment: Accepted by ApJ, 31 pages, using aasms.sty, Also available in postscript with figures via a gzipped tar file at ftp://s1.msi.umn.edu/pub/afrank/3DJet/3DJet.tar.gz . For information contact [email protected]