The Nature of Stellar Winds in the Star-Disk Interaction

TL;DR

This paper investigates the properties of stellar winds in T Tauri stars, showing that hot coronal winds are unlikely to carry enough angular momentum, suggesting winds are cooler and driven by different mechanisms.

Contribution

The study provides simulation-based constraints on hot coronal stellar winds, highlighting their insufficiency for angular momentum loss and proposing cooler winds as a more viable scenario.

Findings

Hot coronal winds produce excessive radiative losses.

Upper limit for accretion-powered wind mass loss rate is ~1e-11 solar masses/year.

Cool winds (~1e4 K) are more plausible for angular momentum transport.

Abstract

Stellar winds may be important for angular momentum transport from accreting T Tauri stars, but the nature of these winds is still not well-constrained. We present some simulation results for hypothetical, hot (~1e6 K) coronal winds from T Tauri stars, and we calculate the expected emission properties. For the high mass loss rates required to solve the angular momentum problem, we find that the radiative losses will be much greater than can be powered by the accretion process. We place an upper limit to the mass loss rate from accretion-powered coronal winds of ~1e-11 solar masses per year. We conclude that accretion powered stellar winds are still a promising scenario for solving the stellar angular momentum problem, but the winds must be cool (~1e4 K) and thus are not driven by thermal pressure.