MHD simulations of protostellar jets: formation and stability of shock diamonds | S. Ustamujic ( Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) )

The early stages of a star birth are characterised by a variety of mass ejection phenomena, including outflows and collimated jets, that are strongly related with the accretion process developed in the context of the star-disc interaction. After been ejected, jets move through the ambient medium, interacting and producing shocks and complex structures that are observed at different wavelength bands. In particular, X-ray observations show evidence of strong shocks heating the plasma up to temperatures of a few million degrees. In some cases, the shocked features appear to be stationary and have been interpreted as shock diamonds. We aim at investigating the physical properties of the shocked plasma and the role of the magnetic field on the collimation of the jet and the location, stability and detectability in X-rays of the stationary shock formed. We performed 2.5D MHD simulations, including the effects of the thermal conduction and the radiative losses. We modelled the propagation of a jet ramming with a supersonic speed into an initially isothermal and homogeneous magnetized medium. We studied the physics that guides the formation of a stationary shock (for instance a shock diamond) and compared the results with observations, via the distribution of emission measure vs. temperature and the luminosity synthesized from the simulations output data.