Related papers: Ambipolar Diffusion Heating in Turbulent Systems
The formation of stars occurs in the dense molecular cloud phase of the interstellar medium. Observations and numerical simulations of molecular clouds have shown that supersonic magnetised turbulence plays a key role for the formation of…
We study the emission and dissipation of acoustic waves from cool dense clouds in pressure equilibrium with a hot, volume-filling dilute gas component. In our model, the clouds are exposed to a source of ionizing radiation whose flux level…
The cold diffuse interstellar medium must harbor pockets of hot gas to produce the large observed abundances of molecular species, the formation of which require much more energy than available in the bulk of its volume. These hot spots…
We investigate the dynamical condensation process in a magnetized thermally bistable medium. We perform one-dimensional two fluid numerical simulations that describe the neutral and ionized components in the interstellar medium with purely…
Radiation transport plays important roles in stellar atmospheres, but the effects of turbulence are being obscured by other effects such as stratification. Using radiative hydrodynamic simulations of forced turbulence, we determine the…
We propose that inward, subsonic flows arise from the local dissipation of turbulent motions in molecular clouds. Such "turbulent cooling flows" may account for recent observations of spatially extended inward motions towards dense cores.…
Recent X-ray observations reveal growing evidence for heating by active galactic nuclei (AGN) in clusters and groups of galaxies. AGN outflows play a crucial role in explaining the riddle of cooling flows and the entropy problem in…
In order to understand the origin of observed molecular cloud properties, it is critical to understand how clouds interact with their environments during their formation, growth, and collapse. It has been suggested that accretion-driven…
Volcanic ash clouds often become multilayered and thin with distance from the vent. We explore one mechanism for development of this layered structure. We review data on the characteristics of turbulence layering in the free atmosphere, as…
The diffuse plasma inside clusters of galaxies has X-ray emitting temperatures of a few keV. The physical mechanisms that heat this intracluster medium (ICM) to such temperatures include the accretion shock at the periphery of a galaxy…
The influence of turbulent mixing on the chemistry of the interstellar medium has so far received little attention. Previous studies of this effect have suggested that it might play an important role in mixing the various phases of the…
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,…
Complex turbulent motions of magnetized gas are ubiquitous in the interstellar medium. The source of this turbulence, however, is still poorly understood. Previous work suggests that compression caused by supernova shockwaves, gravity, or…
An overview is presented of the main properties of the interstellar medium. Evidence is summarized that the interstellar medium is highly turbulent, driven on different length scales by various energetic processes. Large-scale turbulence…
In addition to lines originating in a soft phase at ~0.8 keV and to cold molecular clouds, the X-ray spectra from the Galactic center region also exhibit properties similar to those of a diffuse, thin, very hot plasma at 8 keV on a scale of…
We observed NH3 metastable inversion lines from (3, 3) to (18, 18) toward G0.66-0.13 in the Galactic center with the Shanghai Tianma 65m radio telescope and Yebes 40 m telescope. Highly-excited lines of NH3 (17, 17), (18, 18) were detected…
Turbulence influences the behavior of many astrophysical systems, frequently by providing non-thermal pressure support through random bulk motions. Although turbulence is commonly studied in systems with constant volume and mean density,…
(Abridged). In this paper, we present results from a large set of numerical simulations that demonstrate that H2 formation occurs rapidly in turbulent gas. Starting with purely atomic hydrogen, large quantities of molecular hydrogen can be…
We propose a mechanism for efficient heating of the solar chromosphere, based on non-ideal plasma effects. Three ingredients are needed for the work of this mechanism: (1) presence of neutral atoms; (2) presence of a non-potential magnetic…
Diffusion of atoms and molecules is a key process for the chemical evolution in the star forming regions of the interstellar medium. Accurate data on the mobility of many important interstellar species is however often not available and…