Radiation-Hydrodynamic Simulations of Protostellar Outflows: Synthetic Observations and Data Comparisons

We present results from three-dimensional, self-gravitating, radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of low-mass protostellar outflows. We construct synthetic observations in 12CO in order to compare with observed outflows and evaluate the effects of beam resolution and outflow orientation on inferred outflow properties. To facilitate the comparison, we develop a quantitative prescription for measuring outflow opening angles. Using this prescription, we demonstrate that, in both simulations and synthetic observations, outflow opening angles broaden with time similarly to observed outflows. However, the interaction between the outflowing gas and the turbulent core envelope produces significant asymmetry between the red and blue shifted outflow lobes. We find that applying a velocity cutoff may result in outflow masses that are underestimated by a factor 5 or more, and masses derived from optically thick CO emission further underpredict the mass of the high-velocity gas by a factor of 5-10. Derived excitation temperatures indicate that outflowing gas is hotter than the ambient gas with temperature rising over time, which is in agreement with the simulation gas temperatures. However, excitation temperatures are otherwise not well correlated with the actual gas temperature.