Planetary nebulae form the linchpin in our understanding of how stars like the Sun die. They are the intermediate evolutionary stage between high mass-loss asymptotic giant branch stars and white dwarfs. As the final stage of mass loss for low and intermediate mass stars, the nebulae represent a critical step in the mass and chemical evolution cycle for more than half the material ejected into the interstellar medium. The ubiquity of planetary nebulae and their ease of observation have also made them premier laboratories for testing new astrophysical theories. Here, a program to better understand the formation of planetary nebulae and the late stages of stellar evolution for low and intermediate mass stars will be undertaken. High resolution images of planetary nebulae and their progenitors have triggered a critical reevaluation of the dominant paradigm for nebular shaping. The new data has revealed features such as non-axisymmetric episodic jets and multi-polar outflows which can not be embraced with purely hydrodynamic theories. In addition, data from studies of proto-nebulae show energetic winds forming from cool stars that lack sufficient luminosity for radiative driving. Thus the theory of planetary nebula evolution and, by implication, our ideas about processes at work in the late stages of stellar evolution, require fundamental revision. Previous work by Frank and collaborators has established the potential efficacy of magneto-centrifugal launching processes in planetary nebulae and proto-planetary nebulae. The central source driving the outflow is either a rapidly rotating stellar core or a binary-fed accretion disk or both. In all cases the magnetic field is likely to originate via dynamo processes. The goals of the present study, which build upon this earlier work, are three fold: (1) To understand the nature of magnetic field generation in single asymptotic giant branch (pre-nebula) stars, binary systems and in accretion disks. (2) To link magneto-centrifugal process at the core (star and/or disk) to global planetary nebulae and proto-nebulae morphologies, kinematics and ionization/chemistry states. This will be achieved through the use of a new Adaptive Mesh Refinement code, AstroBEAR, built at the University of Rochester in collaboration with the University of North Carolina Applied Math Department. (3) And to provide theoretical support for an ongoing series of laboratory astrophysics experiments conducted at Imperial College in London which have generated supersonic magnetically driven bubbles. These experiments are directly relevant to these planetary nebula models. While the work here is focused on planetary nebulae it will be of direct relevance to other fields both theoretically and observationally in the sense of allowing planetary nebulae to potentially act as a test-bed for theories of magnetohydrodynamic outflows. The work with the Imperial Collage group helps to deepen the rapidly growing field of High Energy Density Laboratory Astrophysics. The development the AstroBEAR code is of particular benefit as it includes new multi-physics, multi-numerics methods and the work on it here will help train the next generation of computational astrophysicists. Finally, an innovative outreach program is included which involves the creation of Sci-Interactives: simulation based learning modules which will be posted on popular science magazine websites.
