JD7 -Astrophysical Outflows and Associated Accretion Phenomena

Extract

Highly collimated supersonic jets and outflows are very frequent in several astrophysical environments. They are seen in young stellar objects (YSOs), proto-planetary nebulae, compact objects (like galactic black holes or microquasars, and X-ray binary stars), active galactic nuclei, and are also possibly associated to gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and to ultra-high energy cosmic rays sources (UHECRs). Despite their different physical scales, all these outflow classes have strong morphological similarities, but questions such as - what physics do they share? - or - can we find a universal mechanism of acceleration and collimation that operates in all classes? - remain matters of debate. The most accepted mechanism for their origin relies on a rotating accretion disk threaded by perpendicular large-scale magnetic fields and, though most of the systems producing jets contain an accretion disk around the central source, the real role that rotation and magnetic fields play in these processes is still not fully understood, nor are the highly non-linear physical processes connected to these jet-disk systems in the large parameter space involved.