event
Wednesday 29 Oct 2014: Seminar: Accretion discs as regulators of stellar angular momentum evolution during the pre-main sequence
Claire Davies - University of St Andrews
Physics, 4th floor 14:00-15:00
Stars form from the collapse of molecular clouds. If all angular momentum was conserved during their contraction, they would reach rotational velocities exceeding break up within ~1Myr. Instead, pre-main sequence stars are observed to rotate much less rapidly with periods of the order of 1-10 days. Thus, significant angular momentum removal mechanisms must operate during the first few Myrs of formation, while stars are actively accreting material from the inner regions of their discs. In this talk, I will focus on observational constraints we have placed on the efficiency of the proposed removal mechanisms and how they relate to the accretion disc lifetime and the dipole component of the large-scale stellar magnetic field.
