Radiation Rayleigh-Taylor Instabilities in High Mass Star Formation

by Dr M. S. Nanda Kumar (Centro de Astrofisica da Universidade do Porto)

Tuesday 12 Nov 2013, 16:00 → 17:00 Asia/Kolkata

DAA A269 (Colaba Campus)

The formation of the highest mass stars is an enigmatic topic in astrophysics due to a singular problem put forth by theoreticians decades ago: that the radiation pressure during the early phases is powerful enough to halt, or even reverse the accretion of matter driven by gravitational collapse. Adaptive-mesh refinement radiation-hydrodynamics simulations using ORION code combined the physics from decades of theoretical foundation with modern computing power, and showed that radiation Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities in the outflow cavities can dissipate the radiation pressure, solving this major problem. I will present the first observational discovery of such instabilities in a luminous young stellar system and discuss its properties.