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| EPoS Contribution |
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MHD Simulations of Turbulence in Star-forming Interstellar Clouds
Alexei G. Kritsuk University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, USA | |
| I will present results from a series of numerical experiments on MHD turbulence in the multiphase interstellar medium with an aim to explore the formation and evolution of molecular clouds (MCs). We use large-scale forcing in a periodic domain to obtain a fully developed turbulent state with very large density contrasts. Extended filamentary regions of cold dense gas with global properties characteristic of MCs are quite common in these experiments. In contrast to popular colliding flow models, our approach exploits self-organization in magnetized supersonic turbulence to regulate the cloud formation process. The simulations can predict the degree of magnetic support in MCs as a function of the initial flow magnetization. I will discuss the role of magnetic fields in shaping the statistics of multiphase turbulence and correlations between various observables. I will also compare these multiphase simulations with our earlier isothermal models. | |
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| Caption: Volume-weighted histogram for the random magnetic field component in a simulation with uniform magnetic field B_0=3 microgauss. Black line shows data for the full distribution. Red, green, and blue lines show data for the warm, thermally unstable, and cold components of the multiphase gas, respectively. | |
| Collaborators: S.D. Ustyugov, KIfAM Moscow, Russia P. Padoan, ICC - U of Barcelona, Spain M.L. Norman, UC San Diego, USA |
Key publication
Suggested Session: Magnetic Fields, Molecular Clouds, Turbulence |