MUSE-ing Upon the Strange: Exploring Unusual Protostellar Outflows with Integral Field Spectroscopy

Abstract: Jets are a ubiquitous but incompletely understood phenomenon in the early life of pre-main sequence stellar objects. These outflows are connected to accretion processes, indicating an important role in the removal of mass and angular momentum from the system. Jets from low-mass objects like Classical T-Tauri stars have offered the best “touchstones” for constraining accretion/ejection models, but recent observations have seen jets persist from the sub-stellar mass regime up to the massive scales of active galactic nuclei, suggesting a launch mechanism that is independent of the mass of the source. In this study, high angular resolution integral field spectroscopy is utilized to explore three unique jet launching sources spanning a range of age, mass, and environment in order to test the robustness of the outflow mechanism. The study of these less common “edge cases” provides an opportunity to investigate the behavior of jets at the more extreme ends of the stellar spectrum. A key finding is the evidence of commonality, and our results indicate that the outflow mechanism is efficient in its utilization of material, durable in its ability to launch under harsh conditions, and scalable in power to the mass of the driving source.