SpS1-Measuring magnetic fields on young stars

Extract

T Tauri stars (TTSs) are young (~few Myr) late type stars that have only recently emerged from their natal molecular cloud material to become visible at optical wavelengths. It is now generally accepted that accretion of circumstellar disk material onto the surface of a TTS is controlled by a strong stellar magnetic field (e.g. see review by Bouvier et al. 2007). The stellar field appears critical for explaining the rotational properties of TTSs (Bouvier et al. 2007, Herbst et al. 2007) and may also play a critical role in driving the outflows seen from many of these sources (e.g. Shang et al. 2007, Mohanty & Shu 2008). As a result, there is a great deal of interest in measuring the magnetic field properties of TTSs (e.g. Johns–Krull 2007, Donati et al. 2008). In particular, disk locking theories predict that an equilibrium is established where the disk is trunctated at or close to corotation and the stellar rotation rate depends only on the (assumed) dipolar magnetic field strength, the stellar mass, radius, and the mass accretion rate in the disk (see Bouvier et al. 2007).