Non-Thermal Emission from Massive Young Stellar Objects

In the young stellar object (YSO) phase of their lives, massive stars drive bipolar molecular outflows. These outflows produce beautiful, often hourglass shaped, cavities. The central star possesses a powerful stellar wind (upsilon similar to 2000 kms(-1)), and possibly a dense equatorial disk wind (upsilon similar to 400 kms(-1)), which collide with the inner surface of the bipolar cavity and produces hot (T similar to 10(5)-10(8) K) shocked plasma. A reverse shock is formed at the point where the ram pressure between the preshock flow balances the thermal pressure of the postshock flow and provides a site for the acceleration of non-thermal particles to relativistic energies. Hydrodynamical models of the wind interaction, coupled with calculations of the non-thermal energy spectrum, are used to explore the observable synchrotron and gamma-ray emission from these objects.