Cambridge University Press (CUP), Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, H15(5), p. 752-752, 2009
DOI: 10.1017/s1743921310011373
Full text: Unavailable
Stellar rotation at young ages: new results from Corot's Angular momentum is one of the driving forces in the early evolution of stars. Issues such as the coupling between the star and the accretion disk (the so-called disk regulation paradigm), are traced by the evolution of rotational momentum, but affect the star-forming process as a whole. One of the features observed in star-forming regions (e.g. ONC and NGC 2264) of age between 1 and few Myr, for masses above 0.25 solar masses, is a bimodality of the rotational period distribution, with a peak around 1 day and the other at around 4 to 7 days. This bimodality has been interpreted as the smoking gun of the disk-locking mechanism (with the fast rotators having lost their disk and the slow ones still being regulated by their disks).