Jets from young stars

Viac o knihe

The study of stellar jets involves various physical processes, including gravitation, hydrodynamics, magnetohydrodynamics, atomic physics, and radiation. Recent years have seen significant efforts to solve ideal MHD equations in steady-state conditions and to analyze the stability of outflows in a linear regime, contributing greatly to our understanding of jets. However, it became essential to extend these analyses to time-dependent and nonlinear regimes, necessitating the use of MHD numerical simulations. The computational fluid dynamics community has made considerable advancements in developing high-resolution shock capturing schemes, which are particularly effective for managing supersonic flows with discontinuities. These advancements have been applied to astrophysical jets, though they required incorporating new physics, such as magnetic field effects, radiation losses from diluted gases, and appropriate astrophysical environments. This led to the complex adaptation of methods originally designed for Euler equations to the magnetohydrodynamical system. Moreover, the ability to conduct numerical calculations has been enhanced by the availability of powerful supercomputers and affordable, fast processors. As a result, large-scale 3D simulations of jets at high resolution are now feasible, and high-resolution 2D MHD simulations can be routinely executed on desktop computers.