infrared view of protostellar shocks

The early phases of star formation occur in thick and obscured clouds of dust and molecular gas, where the material collapses under the influence of self-gravity, originating protostars. The process of mass accretion on protostars is one of the less known of the whole stellar evolution. The accretion process goes on through circumstellar disc and part of the infalling material is ejected away from the protostar in form of bipolar jets. Jets can be observed more easily with respect to the circumstellar disc and they often represent the only observational target to reveal the presence of their driving source. Protostellar jets interact with the interstellar medium in the form of shock waves which heat the gas that, in turn, cools by emitting atomic, ionic and molecular lines. Through the analysis of the emission lines it is possible to study the physics and the chemestry of the shocked regions and derive the exchange of energy between the protostar and the interstellar medium. This work presents a study of protostellar jets (HH objects) carried out with two different spectroscopic techniques: the "classical" long-slit spectroscopy and the "novel" integral field spectroscopy.