The Impact of Young Stellar Outflows on their Surroundings

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Dr. Arce is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Dr. Arce's research aims to study the mass outflow stage of the star formation process. In particular, the study will concentrate on the effects of mass outflows from young stellar objects on the ambient medium at different size and density scales. The research will focus on how much energy and momentum outflows deposit in their surroundings and will study the impact outflows have on the star-formation process, on their parent molecular clouds' evolution, and on the surrounding interstellar medium. The study will utilize new and existing observational instruments as well as extensive datasets from unparalleled surveys; in addition, Dr. Arce will compare the observational data with state-of-the-art numerical models in order to study the effects of outflows on their host clouds' turbulence and on the star-formation process. Dr. Arce's educational program will provide scientific research experiences to high school students from traditionally underrepresented groups through a hands-on project using a small radio telescope. Students involved in the project will gain experience in astronomy, signal processing, and data reduction, analysis and presentation. In addition, the radio telescope will be used to expand other existing educational programs at the AMNH. Dr. Arce will also mentor undergraduate students who participate in the research program outlined above.