Prof Ned Ladd (Bucknell University)

Core/Outflow Interaction in Star-Forming Cores - Prof Ned Ladd Colloquium

ATNF Marsfield Lecture Theatre

Abstract

The recipe for making low-mass stars is fairly well-established:

1) assemble a few solar masses of gas and dust into a dense core;

2) wait for a bit until it becomes gravitationally unstable;

3) let the material collapse into a central protostar and circumstellar disk;

4) wait a bit more until the protostar's internal temperature allows for fusion;

5) to improve presentation, allow some of the material in the remnant circumstellar disk to form into planets.


Many of these steps have been examined in detail, from both
observational and theoretical perspectives, and a remarkably
successful paradigm for this process has been created. However, some
fundamental questions remain. Chief among them is the issue of how the
star's mass is set. Observations show that dense cores have
substantially more mass than the mass of the stars they form,
indicating that forming stars decouple from their dense cores before
the reservoir of available mass is exhausted. In this talk, I'll
discuss how feedback from a forming star, specifically in the form of
a bipolar outflow, might limit mass accretion onto the star and
thereby set the star's final mass.