The Turbulent Origin of Outflow and Spin Misalignment in Multiple Star Systems

Understand

The protostellar outflows of wide-separation forming binaries frequently appear misaligned.

• We use magneto-hydrodynamic simulations to investigate the alignment of protostellar spin and molecular outflows for forming binary pairs.
• We show that the protostellar pairs, which form from turbulent fragmentation within a single parent core, have randomly oriented angular momenta.
• Although the pairs migrate to closer separations, their spins remain partially misaligned.