Speaker
Description
During their early formation stages, massive stars are surrounded by accretion disks and launch powerful magnetically-driven jets and molecular outflows. Observing the innermost (embedded) material surrounding a forming massive star has only been possible recently, thanks to the use of techniques like very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI). In this contribution, I will present a new generation of non-ideal magnetohydrodynamical simulations of the formation of a massive star starting from the collapse of a molecular cloud, and including radiation transport, Ohmic dissipation and self-gravity. I will discuss how the simulations show the magnetic field and rotation self-consistently launching protostellar outflows: a fast jet (> 100 km/s) and a magnetic tower flow (~10 km/s). Finally, I will show the how the agreement between our simulations and a new generation of VLBI water maser observations in the star-forming region IRAS 21078+5211 has allowed us to confirm with unprecedented detail that protostellar outflows are launched as MHD disk winds. I will also briefly discuss about the role of MHD jets in removing angular momentum from the disk and the forming star. This contribution is based on the following articles: Oliva & Kuiper 2023 (A&A, 669, A81), and Moscadelli et al. (2022, Nature Astron., 6, 1068).
