Evolution and Fragmentation of Wide-Angle Wind Driven Molecular Outflows

Abstract

We present two dimensional cylindrically symmetric hydrodynamic simulations and synthetic emission maps of a stellar wind propagating into an infalling, rotating environment. The resulting outflow morphology, collimation and stability observed in these simulations have relevance to the study of young stellar objects, Herbig-Haro jets and molecular outflows. Our code follows hydrogen gas with molecular, atomic and ionic components tracking the associated time dependent molecular chemistry and ionization dynamics with radiative cooling appropriate for a dense molecular gas. We present tests of the code as well as new simulations which indicate the presence of instabilities in the wind-blown bubble’s swept-up shell.