The Effect of a Stellar Magnetic Variation on the Jet Velocity

Abstract

Stellar jets are normally constituted by chains of knots with some periodicity in their spatial distribution, corresponding to a variability of order of several years in the ejection from the protostar/disk system. A widely accepted theory for the presence of knots is related to the generation of internal working surfaces due to variations in the jet ejection velocity. In this paper we study the effect of variations in the inner disk-wind radius on the jet ejection velocity. We show that a small variation in the inner disk-wind radius produces a variation in the jet velocity large enough to generate the observed knots. We also show that the variation in the inner radius may be related to a variation of the stellar magnetic field.