Measurement of Magnetic Fields in Stellar Jets

Abstract

This article reviews magnetic field measurements in jets from young stars, focusing on the physics and application of the three main techniques, Zeeman splitting and polarization, gyrosynchrotron radiation, and the analysis of shocked cooling zones. Estimates of field strengths in stellar jets are rare, and do not refer to the axis of the beam close to the source, where knowledge of the field and its geometry is most critical for constraining launching mechanisms of jets. Nevertheless, the existing measurements demonstrate that magnetic fields in YSO jets are strong enough to be important in the dynamics of the cooling zones behind internal shock waves, even though the ram pressure in the bulk flow dominates the magnetic pressure at large distances from the source. Models of pulsed magnetic flow show that velocity perturbations sweep up the field into dense working surfaces within the jet, increasing the relative importance of magnetic pressure to the dynamics in these regions and reducing its importance in the rarefaction regions that lie between the dense knots.