Related papers: Ambipolar Drift in a Turbulent Medium
Although thermal pressure is unimportant dynamically in most molecular gas, the temperature is an important diagnostic of dynamical processes and physical conditions. This is the first of two papers on thermal equilibrium in molecular…
Theoretical approaches to low-frequency magnetized turbulence in collisionless and weakly collisional astrophysical plasmas are reviewed. The proper starting point for an analytical description of these plasmas is kinetic theory, not fluid…
Ambipolar diffusion (AD) is believed to be a crucial process for redistributing magnetic flux in the dense molecular gas that occurs in regions of star formation. We carry out numerical simulations of this process in regions of low…
The basic character of diffusive transport in a magnetised plasma depends on what kind of transport is modelled. ExB turbulence under drift ordering has special characteristics: it is nearly incompressible, and it cannot lead to magnetic…
Several topics in the theory of magnetized turbulence are reviewed with application to star formation and the interstellar medium. The density, pressure, and temperature distribution in a turbulent interstellar medium is described in…
In a spherically symmetric plasma constrained by its own gravity, the ionization degree lags behind changes in temperature and density. The ambipolar electric field accelerates ions radially and cools electrons. Ions lose energy and angular…
When present, extended disks of neutral hydrogen around spiral galaxies show a remarkably uniform velocity dispersion of approx 6 km/s. Since stellar winds and supernovae are largely absent in such regions, neither the magnitude nor the…
Transitional protostellar disks have inner cavities heavily depleted in dust and gas, yet most show signs of ongoing accretion, often at rates comparable to full disks. We show that recent constraints on the gas surface density in a few…
Magnetic fields play an important role in astrophysical accretion discs, and in the interstellar and intergalactic medium. They drive jets, suppress fragmentation in star-forming clouds and can have a significant impact on the accretion…
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…
As another step towards understanding the long-term evolution of the magnetic field in neutron stars, we provide the first simulations of ambipolar diffusion in a spherical star. Restricting ourselves to axial symmetry, we consider a…
Interstellar turbulence is driven over a wide range of scales by processes including spiral arm instabilities and supernovae, and it affects the rate and morphology of star formation, energy dissipation, and angular momentum transfer in…
Understanding the star formation process is central to much of modern astrophysics. For several decades it has been thought that stellar birth is primarily controlled by the interplay between gravity and magnetostatic support, modulated by…
This study is motivated by recent observations on ubiquitous interstellar density filaments and guided by modern theories of compressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. The interstellar turbulence shapes the observed density…
Angular momentum transport in protostellar disks can be achieved by the action of a large scale magnetic field that runs vertically through the disk. The magnetic field centrifugally drives material from the disk surfaces into a wind,…
Both observations and modelling of magnetic fields in the diffuse interstellar gas of spiral galaxies are well developed but the theory has been confronted with observations for only a handful of individual galaxies. There is now sufficient…
The low-frequency instability of a cylindrical poorly magnetized plasma with an inward-directed radial electric field is studied changing the gas pressure and the ion cyclotron frequency. The unstable frequency always decreases when the gas…
The small-scale turbulent dynamo is an important process contributing to the cosmic magnetization. In partially ionized astrophysical plasmas, the dynamo growth of magnetic energy strongly depends on the coupling state between ions and…
We discuss the temperature distribution in a two-dimensional, thermally unstable numerical simulation of the warm and cold gas in the Galactic disk, including the magnetic field, self-gravity, the Coriolis force, stellar energy injection…
Magnetic field are transported and tangled by turbulence, even as they lose identity due to nonideal or resistive effects. On balance field lines undergo stretch-twist-fold processes. The curvature field, a scalar that measures the tangling…