Star Formation, Stellar Feedback, and the Ecology of Galaxies

Accretion driven outflows play a fundament role in star formation, reducing the star formation efficiency, shaping the initial mass function, and regulating the rate of star formation in clouds. Despite the importance of this mode of feedback, substantial questions remain, particular for the deeply embedded phases of star formation. Questions such as what is the nature of the wide angle wind component of the outflows, how is the momentum from the outflows coupled to the surrounding envelopes, and how do the outflows vary in time and with stellar mass?

JWST, with its ability to obtain 2.9-27 micron IFU spectral imaging, is now detecting warm gas in jets and winds via ionic, atomic and molecular tracers. We will present observations made in the Cycle 1 Investigating Protostellar Accretion (IPA) program, a 65 hour program observing five Class 0 protostars with keplerian masses of 0.12 to 12 solar masses.

For the 0.12 to 2.5 solar masses protostars, these observations show high velocity jets (150 km s-1) in lines of shocked ionized gas such as [FeII]. Although the jets are primarily traced in ionic lines, they contain knots or regions of molecular emission indicating molecules can be launched, entrained, or formed in the jets. Surrounding the jets are lower velocity winds (20 km s-1) traced in molecular hydrogen and other molecules such CO, CO2 and H2O. Using 1D shock models, we are constraining the mass, momentum and energy flows of the jets/winds as a function of the stellar mass and luminosity.

We will also discuss the Cycle 3 program High angular resolution observations of stellar Emergence in Filamentary Environments (HEFE), a 180 hour program targeting the OMC2/3 region of Orion with a combination of NIRCam imaging and NIRSpec and MIRI IFU observations, merged with ground-based data, to provide a comprehensive portrait of accretion and feedback in this highly active SFR. Observations are scheduled for this winter, and we will show initial results.