Abstract
We present results from three-dimensional, self-gravitating, radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of low-mass protostellar outflows. We construct synthetic observations in 12CO in order to compare with observed outflows and evaluate the effects of beam resolution and outflow orientation on inferred outflow properties. To facilitate the comparison, we develop a quantitative prescription for measuring outflow opening angles. Using this prescription, we demonstrate that, in both simulations and synthetic observations, outflow opening angles broaden with time similarly to observed outflows. However, the interaction between the outflowing gas and the turbulent core envelope produces significant asymmetry between the redshifted and blueshifted outflow lobes. We find that applying a velocity cutoff may result in outflow masses that are underestimated by a factor five or more, and masses derived from optically thick CO emission further underpredict the mass of the high-velocity gas by a factor of 5–10. Derived excitation temperatures indicate that outflowing gas is hotter than the ambient gas with temperature rising over time, which is in agreement with the simulation gas temperatures. However, excitation temperatures are otherwise not well correlated with the actual gas temperature.
Highlights
Young protostars power high-velocity jets that entrain and unbind a large fraction of the natal protostellar core gas
The two R2 protostars are sufficiently close that separating the outflow lobes in projection is difficult
We present results from self-gravitating, radiationhydrodynamic simulations of low-mass protostellar outflows using the adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code ORION
Summary
Young protostars power high-velocity jets that entrain and unbind a large fraction of the natal protostellar core gas. The largest outflows accelerate gas to velocities exceeding 100 km s−1 and extend across several parsecs. On these scales, outflows powerfully impact their environment and potentially inject significant energy back into the parent molecular cloud (Matzner & McKee 1999). Outflows powerfully impact their environment and potentially inject significant energy back into the parent molecular cloud (Matzner & McKee 1999) This feedback may be partially responsible for maintaining turbulence on 0.1–1 pc scales (Nakamura & Li 2007; Swift & Welch 2008; Arce & Sargent 2005; Arce et al 2010)
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