The Early History of Stellar Spin: the Theory of Accretion onto Young Stellar Objects

The interaction of the magnetospheres of forming stars with their surrounding protostellar disks results in magnetospheric accretion flow onto the star. How is the associated angular momentum of accreting material channelled? The resolution of this issue is crucial for understanding the origin of the spins of pre main sequence stars. A significant fraction of these rotate very slowly, which indicates that an efficient angular momentum transport mechanism is at work to counteract the strong accretion spin up torques. We review the observational, theoretical, and computational advances in the field and argue that an accretion powered stellar winds together with highly time variable mass ejections from the disk/magnetosphere interface is a likely solution.