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Jet Simulations, Experiments and Theory

Final Activity Report Summary - JETSET (Jet Simulations, Experiments and Theory)

The JETSET network brought together modellers, observers and laboratory scientists in order to try and understand the remarkable phenomenon accompanying the birth of stars, i.e. the generation of supersonic jets that can stretch for many light-years. These signposts of star formation seem to be nearby, small-scale, in astronomy terms, versions of the jets seen flowing from active galaxies, quasars and gamma-ray bursters. By understanding jets from young stars, we could get clues not only for the formation of our own solar system but also for processes that are going on around exotic objects like black holes and neutron stars.

10 European institutions were involved in the network, training 12 early-stage researchers pursuing PhD studies and five experienced researchers, i.e. postdoctoral fellows. JETSET organised a total of five week-long schools, a number of informal workshops and a closing international conference held in Rhodes, Greece. Some of the scientific highlights included the discovery of jets from young brown dwarfs, which are objects intermediate in mass between stars and planets, the generation of jets in the laboratory that replicated many of the features, such as shocks, degree of collimation and cooling, observed in young stellar object jets, three-dimensional codes that tested how jets were launched from accretion disks and observational support for the idea that jets carried away angular momentum from the disk, thereby allowing for accretion.

As a result of the JETSET Marie Curie research training network, many new inter-institutional links were formed. This resulted in an enormous number of European collaborations on existing and future space and ground based facilities and laboratory experiments, as well as in the use of high performance computing.