Related papers: Tracing Turbulent Ambipolar Diffusion in Molecular…
We investigate the radial transport of magnetic flux in a thin accretion disc, the turbulence being modelled by effective diffusion coefficients (viscosity and resistivity). Both turbulent diffusion and advection by the accretion flow…
The turbulent diffusion tensor describing the evolution of the mean concentration of a passive scalar is investigated for non-helically forced turbulence in the presence of rotation or a magnetic field. With rotation, the Coriolis force…
We study the effect of the non-linear process of ambipolar diffusion (joint transport of magnetic flux and charged particles relative to neutral particles) on the long-term behavior of a non-uniform magnetic field in a one-dimensional…
A fundamental property of molecular clouds is that they are turbulent, but how this turbulence is generated and maintained is unknown. One possibility is that stars forming within the cloud regenerate turbulence via their outflows, winds…
Turbulence and magnetic fields are components of the interstellar medium and are interconnected through plasma processes. In particular, the magnetic flux transport in the presence of magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence is an essential…
The heating of the ion-neutral (or ambipolar) diffusion may affect the thermal phases of the molecular clouds. We present an investigation on the effect of this heating mechanism in the thermal instability of the molecular clouds. A weakly…
Star formation is primarily controlled by the interplay between gravity, turbulence, and magnetic fields. However, the turbulence and magnetic fields in molecular clouds near the Galactic Center may differ substantially from spiral-arm…
Ambipolar diffusion can cause a velocity drift between ions and neutrals. This is one of the non-ideal MHD effects proposed to enable the formation of Keplerian disks with sizes of tens of au. To observationally study ambipolar diffusion in…
The coupling state between ions and neutrals in the interstellar medium plays a key role in the dynamics of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence, but is challenging to study numerically. In this work, we investigate the damping of MHD…
The lower solar atmosphere consists of partially ionized turbulent plasmas harbouring velocity field, magnetic field and current density fluctuations. The correlations amongst these small scale fluctuations give rise to large scale flows…
Calculations are performed for the linear polarization of starlight due to extinction by aligned dust grains when the starlight traverses a medium with irregular magnetic fields. This medium is intended to represent the optically thick…
We demonstrate that the formation of collapsing cores in subcritical clouds is accelerated by nonlinear flows, by performing three-dimensional non-ideal MHD simulations. An initial random supersonic (and trans-Alfvenic) turbulent-like flow…
Until recently, many of the dozens of quantitative predictions of the ambipolar-diffusion theory of gravitational fragmentation (or core formation) of molecular clouds have been confirmed by observations and, just as importantly, no…
We (Li et al. 2009; Paper-I) compared the magnetic field directions inferred from polarimetry data obtained from 100-pc scale inter-cloud media (ICM) and from sub-pc scale molecular cloud cores. The highly correlated result led us to…
Observations indicate that dense molecular filamentary clouds are sites of star formation. The filament width determines the most unstable scale for self-gravitational fragmentation and influences the stellar mass. Therefore, constraining…
We discuss constraints on the rates of stirring and dissipation of MHD turbulence in molecular clouds. Recent MHD simulations suggest that turbulence in clouds decays rapidly, thus providing a significant source of energy input,…
Turbulent diffuse molecular clouds can exhibit complicated morphologies caused by the interactions among radiation, chemistry, fluids, and fields. We performed full 3D simulations for turbulent diffuse molecular interstellar media,…
Initial results from simulations of 4-fluid MHD turbulence in molecular clouds are presented. The species included in the simulations are ions, electrons, negatively charged dust grains and neutrals. The results indicate that, on length…
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…
We discuss a few recent developments that are important for understanding of MHD turbulence. First, MHD turbulence is not so messy as it is usually believed. In fact, the notion of strong non-linear coupling of compressible and…