Seminario DAS: Revealing the nature of molecular jets from protostars with ALMA

Speaker: Guillermo Blázquez, M.Sc.
Affiliation: ESO Student, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía

Abstract: Outflows are a key ingredient of the star formation process, playing an important role in the assembly of stars by removing angular momentum from the protostar/disk system and regulating the star formation efficiency at cloud scales. These ejections typically have two distinct components: a highly collimated (atomic and/or molecular) jet traveling at a few hundred km/s, and a less collimated molecular outflow traveling at velocities around 10 km/s. While jets are launched from the vicinity of the protostar, molecular outflows are composed of swept-up ambient material whose primary driving agent (jets or wide-angle winds) is still debated. Molecular jets can shed light on this debate because they can be observed with the same tracers as molecular outflows. Although recent surveys show that molecular jets are more common than previously thought, detailed analyses from observations with sufficient sensitivity and resolution towards individual objects are scarce. In this talk, I will present high angular and spectral resolution ALMA observations of a molecular jet. This detailed analysis allows us to compare with physical models, shedding light on the nature of molecular jets and on the driving agent for molecular outflows.