Characterizing the structure of interstellar turbulence
| dc.creator | Mac Low, Mordecai-Mark | |
| dc.creator | Ossenkopf, Volker | |
| dc.date | 1999-06-21 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T02:32:07Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T02:32:07Z | |
| dc.description | Modeling the structure of molecular clouds depends on good methods to statistically compare simulations with observations in order to constrain the models. Here we characterize a suite of hydrodynamical and magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) simulations of supersonic turbulence using an averaged wavelet transform, the Delta-variance, that has been successfully used to characterize observations. We find that, independent of numerical resolution and dissipation, the only models that produce scale-free, power-law Delta-variance spectra are those with hypersonic Mach numbers above M ~ 4, while slower supersonic turbulence tends to show characteristic scales and produce non-power-law spectra. Magnetic fields have only a minor influence on this tendency, though they tend to reduce the scale-free nature of the turbulence, and increase the transfer of energy from large to small scales. The evolution of the characteristic length scale seen in supersonic turbulence follows exactly the t^{1/2} power-law predicted from recent studies of the kinetic energy decay rate. | |
| dc.description | 11 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9906334 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9906334 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/14393 | |
| dc.subject | Astrophysics | |
| dc.title | Characterizing the structure of interstellar turbulence | |
| dc.type | text |