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Session 24 - Star Formation in the Galaxy & the LMC.
Display session, Tuesday, June 10
South Main Hall,
The origin of jets associated with Young Stellar Objects remains a subject of considerable debate. Popular models invoke magneto-centrifugal acceleration and collimation of jet material from an accretion disk. Other models invoke purely hydrodynamic collimation. If the MHD models are correct then it is expected that relatively strong fields will remain embedded in the jets as they propagate outwards. To distinguish between competing scenarios it is of interest to see if the propagation of magnetized jets will have significantly different properties from purely hydrodynamic jets. Using a high order accurate cylindrically symmetric MHD code which includes the effects of radiative losses we have simulated the long term evolution of stellar (YSO) jets with embedded toroidal (B = B_\phi) fields. Our results demonstrate that magnetically dominated jets (plasma \beta \sim 1) show appreciable differences in both their morphology and kinematics from jets with dynamically weak fields. Features such as pinch modes and "nose cones" (seen in MHD models of extra-galactic jets) appear in the strong field flows which are then modified by radiative losses.
