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T. A. Gardiner, A. Frank (University of Rochester, Department of Physics and Astronomy)
In this paper we present time dependent, numerical simulations of magnetohydrodynamic winds appropriate for outflows from young stellar objects. The goal of this work is to study the influence of a collapsing environment on the collimation of weakly magnetized winds from a central source. The winds are weakly magnetized in the sense that they originate from slow magnetic rotators, i.e. the magnetic field is relatively unimportant in accelerating the wind. Calculations of steady flows from slow magnetic rotators show that they collimate over relatively large length scales (Tsinganos et al. 2000). Nevertheless, we find that even slow magnetic rotators can result in well collimated jets through a magnetic analog of shock focusing. We present results for steady and time dependent winds with spherically symmetric and non-spherically symmetric mass loss rates similar to the asymptotic X-wind model (Shu et al. 1995). In many ways this work is a natural continuation of the project initiated by Delamarter et al. (2000).
Delamarter, G., Frank, A. & Hartmann, L. 2000, ApJ, 530, 923
Shu, F. H., Najita, J., Ostriker, E. C. & Shang, H. 1995, ApJ, 455, L155
Tsinganos, K. & Bogovalov, S. 2000, AA, 356, 989