Near-Infrared Spectroscopy of Young Stellar Objects

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

One of the most reliable signatures of the youngest observable stars is the emission of their infrared CO spectral lines from a wind or a pair of collimated bipolar jets. The source of this energetic outflow is still unknown, but there are reasons to believe that the energy for this particle ejection comes from the infall of matter from a circumstellar accretion disk. The matter is then deflected by a combination of magnetic and stellar rotation forces and ejected in a collimated flow. The object of this proposal is to study the emission profiles of CO, hydrogen, oxygen, and lines of other elements in order to test the correctness "x-celerator" model. The Principal Investigator and his Co-Investigator have just constructed a high dispersion infrared spectrograph that they will use for this program at the infrared telescopes on Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii. They will use their data to constrain the kinematical models for observed flows and work closely with the originator of the x-celerator model, Dr. Frank Shu of U. Calif. Berkeley. The results of this investigation are expected to have application not only to young stars but to other sites where bipolar jets have been observed, such as the nuclei of "active" galaxies.