This U.S.-Venezuela award will support Dr. Lee Hartmann and Dr. Scott Kenyon of the Smithsonian Institution Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge Massachusetts, in a research collaboration with Dr. Nuria Calvet of the Centro de Investigaciones de Astronomia in Merida, Venezuela. The purpose of the research is to carry out theoretical and observational investigations of the acceleration of jets from young stars. These jets or focussed winds emanate from the accretion disks that surround the youngest stars and are an important component of the energy budget of star formation. The proposed joint effort takes advantage of the observational capabilities of the U.S. investigators and the theoretical experience of the Venezuelan researcher in radiative transfer models for protostellar accretion disks and winds. The result will be the development of models for the acceleration of protostellar disk winds and jets which are consistent with, and supported by observations. This research may have implications for theories of accretion disk winds for many other astrophysical systems, such as cataclysmic variables and active galactic nuclei.
