Related papers: The link between molecular cloud structure and tur…
The structure of molecular clouds (MCs) holds important clues on the physical processes that lead to their formation and subsequent evolution. While it is well established that turbulence imprints a self-similar structure to the clouds,…
We analyse extinction maps of nearby Giant Molecular Clouds to forge a link between driving processes of turbulence and modes of star formation. Our investigation focuses on cloud structure in the column density range above the self…
To study the interaction of star-formation and turbulent molecular cloud structuring, we analyse numerical models and observations of self-gravitating clouds using the Delta-variance as statistical measure for structural characteristics. In…
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)…
The formation of stars is inextricably linked to the structure of their parental molecular clouds. Here we take a number of nearby giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and analyse their column density and mass distributions. This investigation is…
We revisit the origin of Larson's scaling relations, which describe the structure and kinematics of molecular clouds, based on recent observations and large-scale simulations of supersonic turbulence. Using dimensional analysis, we first…
We investigate the effect of star formation on turbulence in the Orion A and Ophiuchus clouds using principal component analysis (PCA). We measure the properties of turbulence by applying PCA on the spectral maps in $^{13}$CO, C$^{18}$O,…
We present a direct numerical and analytical study of driven supersonic MHD turbulence that is believed to govern the dynamics of star-forming molecular clouds. We describe statistical properties of the turbulence by measuring the velocity…
We compare velocity structure in the Polaris Flare molecular cloud at scales ranging from 0.015 pc to 20 pc to simulations of supersonic hydrodynamic and MHD turbulence computed with the ZEUS MHD code. We use several different statistical…
The Delta-variance analysis is an efficient tool for measuring the structural scaling behaviour of interstellar turbulence in astronomical maps. In paper I we proposed essential improvements to the Delta-variance analysis. In this paper we…
We employ the Delta-variance analysis and study the turbulent gas dynamics of simulated molecular clouds (MCs). Our models account for a simplified treatment of time-dependent chemistry and the non-isothermal nature of the gas. We…
The universality of interstellar turbulence is examined from observed structure functions of 27 giant molecular clouds and Monte Carlo modeling. We show that the structure functions, dv=v0 l^gamma, derived from wide field imaging of CO…
We present a systematic analysis of the velocity structure functions (VSFs) of 167 molecular clouds with angular sizes greater than $\sim$176 arcmin$^2$ in three sectors of the Galactic mid-plane. We calculated the 1st- to 3rd-order VSFs…
Supersonic turbulence in molecular clouds is a dominant agent that strongly affects the clouds' evolution and star formation activity. Turbulence may be initiated and maintained by a number of processes, acting at a wide range of physical…
In order to investigate the origin of the interstellar turbulence, detailed observations in the CO J=1--0 and 3--2 lines have been carried out in an interacting region of a molecular cloud with an HII region. As a result, several 1,000 to…
We review the properties of turbulent molecular clouds (MCs), focusing on the physical processes that influence star formation (SF). MC formation appears to occur during large-scale compression of the diffuse ISM driven by supernovae,…
Turbulence plays a major role in the formation and evolution of molecular clouds. The problem is that turbulent velocities are convolved with the density of an observed region. To correct for this convolution, we investigate the relation…
[abridged] We determine the relationship between turbulence energy and gas density variance for 15 molecular clouds in the Solar neighbourhood. We use the linewidths of the CO molecule as the probe of the turbulence energy (sonic Mach…
We introduce a model for the large-scale, global 3D structure of molecular clouds. Motivated by the morphological appearance of clouds in surface density maps, we model clouds as cylinders, with the aim of backing out information about the…
We examine how well the physical properties of clumps in turbulent molecular clouds can be determined by measurements of observed clump structures. We compare simulated observations of three-dimensional numerical models of isothermal,…