No Arabic abstract
High spatial resolution images of PNe have shown their extremely complex morphology. However, the circumstellar envelopes of their progenitors, the AGB stars, are strikingly spherical. In order to understand the carving processes leading to axisymmetric nebulae, we are carrying out a study of a large sample of pre-PNe. Our emission model of the nebular molecular gas (12CO & 13CO) will allow us to determine important physical parameters (mass, linear momentum, kinetic energy) of the fast bipolar and slow spherical nebular components separately. We will study in an innovative way the properties for each source individually, and put our results in an evolutionary context with the help of the data obtained by us and collected from the literature.
A plausible model is proposed for the enhancement of the abundance of molecular species in bipolar outflow sources. In this model, levels of HCO+ enhancement are considered based on previous chemical calculations, that are assumed to result from shock-induced desorption and photoprocessing of dust grain ice mantles in the boundary layer between the outflow jet and the surrounding envelope. A radiative transfer simulation that incorporates chemical variations within the flow shows that the proposed abundance enhancements in the boundary layer are capable of reproducing the observed characteristics of the outflow seen in HCO+ emission in the star forming core L1527. The radiative transfer simulation also shows that the emission lines from the enhanced molecular species that trace the boundary layer of the outflow exhibit complex line profiles indicating that detailed spatial maps of the line profiles are essential in any attempt to identify the kinematics of potential infall/outflow sources. This study is one of the first applications of a full three dimensional radiative transfer code which incorporates chemical variations within the source.
Bipolar outflows constitute some of the best laboratories to study shock chemistry in the interstellar medium. A number of molecular species have their abundance enhanced by several orders of magnitude in the outflow gas, likely as a combined result of dust mantle disruption and high temperature gas chemistry, and therefore become sensitive indicators of the physical changes taking place in the shock. Identifying these species and understanding their chemical behavior is therefore of high interest both to chemical studies and to our understanding of the star-formation process. Here we review some of the recent progress in the study of the molecular composition of bipolar outflows, with emphasis in the tracers most relevant for shock chemistry. As we discuss, there has been rapid progress both in characterizing the molecular composition of certain outflows as well as in modeling the chemical processes likely involved. However, a number of limitations still affect our understanding of outflow chemistry. These include a very limited statistical approach in the observations and a dependence of the models on plane-parallel shocks, which cannot reproduce the observed wing morphology of the lines. We finish our contribution by discussing the chemistry of the so-called extremely high velocity component, which seems different from the rest of the outflow and may originate in the wind from the very vicinity of the protostar.
Images of an 8 square minute region around the Orion KL source have been made in the J=7-6 (806 GHz) and J=4-3 (461 GHz) lines of CO with angular resolutions of 13 and 18. These data were taken employing on-the-fly mapping and position switching techniques. Our J=7-6 data set is the largest image of Orion with the highest sensitivity and resolution obtained so far in this line. Most of the extended emission arises from a Photon Dominated Region (PDR), but 8% is associated with the Orion ridge. For the prominent Orion KL outflow, we produced ratios of the integrated intensities of our J=7-6 and 4-3 data to the J=2-1 line of CO. Large Velocity Gradient (LVG) models fit the outflow ratios better than PDR models. The LVG models give H_2 densities of ~10^5 per ccm. The CO outflow is probably heated by shocks. In the Orion S outflow, the CO line intensities are lower than for Orion KL. The 4-3/2-1 line ratio is 1.3 for the blue shifted wing and 0.8 for the red shifted wing. Emission in the jet feature extending 2 to the SW of Orion S was detected in the J=4-3 but not the J=7-6 line; the average 4-3/2-1 line ratio is ~1. The line ratios in the Orion S outflow and jet features are consistent with both PDR and LVG models. Comparisons of the intensities of the J=7-6 and J=4-3 lines from the Orion Bar with PDR models show that the ratios exceed predictions by a factor of 2. Either clumping or additional heating by mechanisms such as shocks, may be the cause of this discrepancy.
UltraFast Outflows (UFOs), seen as X-ray blueshifted absorption lines in active galactic nuclei (AGNs), are considered to be a key mechanism for AGN feedback. In this scenario, UFO kinetic energy is transferred into the cold and extended molecular outflow observed at the mm/sub-mm wavelength, which blows away the gas and suppresses star formation and accretion onto the central black hole (BH). However, the energy transfer between the inner UFO and the outer molecular outflow has not yet fully studied mainly due to the limited sample. In this paper, we performed comparison of their kinetic energy using the mm/sub-mm published data and the X-ray archival data. Among fourteen Seyfert galaxies whose molecular outflows are detected in the IRAM/PdBI data, eight targets are bright enough to perform spectral fitting in X-ray, and we have detected UFO absorption lines in six targets with 90% significance level, using XMM-Newton and Suzaku satellites. The time-averaged UFO kinetic energy was derived from the spectral fitting. As a result, we have found that the energy-transfer rate (kinetic energy ratio of the molecular outflow to the UFO) ranges from $sim7times10^{-3}$ to $sim$1, and has a negative correlation with the BH mass, which shows that the AGN feedback is more efficient in the lower mass BHs. This tendency is consistent with the theoretical prediction that the cooling time scale of the outflowing gas becomes longer than the flow time scale when the BH mass is smaller.
We have obtained X-ray observations of the bipolar planetary nebulae (PNe) NGC 2346 and NGC 7026 with XMM-Newton. These observations detected diffuse X-ray emission from NGC 7026 but not from NGC 2346. The X-ray emission from NGC 7026 appears to be confined within the bipolar lobes of the PN and has spectral properties suggesting a thermal plasma emitting at a temperature of 1.1 +0.5/-0.2 times 10^6 K. The X-ray spectrum of NGC 7026 is modeled using nebular and stellar abundances to assess whether a significant amount of nebular material has been mixed into the shocked-wind, but the results of this comparison are not conclusive owing to the small number of counts detected. Observations of bipolar PNe indicate that diffuse X-ray emission is much less likely detected in open-lobed nebulae than closed-lobed nebulae, possibly because open-lobed nebulae do not have strong fast winds or are unable to retain hot gas.