Related papers: Small Ionized and Neutral Structures: A Theoretica…
The hydrodynamic state of the interstellar medium (ISM) heated and randomly stirred by supernovae (SNe) is investigated. We use a three-dimensional non-ideal hydrodynamic ISM model in a domain extending 0.5 x 0.5 kpc horizontally and 2 kpc…
How does turbulence contribute to the formation and structure of the dense interstellar medium (ISM)? Molecular clouds are dense, high-pressure objects. It is usually argued that gravitational confinement causes the high pressures, and that…
The interstellar medium (ISM) is subject, on one hand, to heating and cooling processes that tend to segregate it into distinct phases due to thermal instability (TI), and on the other, to turbulence-driving mechanisms that tend to produce…
This two-part review summarizes interstellar turbulence and its implications. The first part begins with diagnostics and energy sources. Turbulence theory is considered in detail, including the basic fluid equations, solenoidal and…
"The purpose of numerical models is not numbers but insight." (Hamming) In the spirit of this adage, and of Don Cox's approach to scientific speaking, we discuss the questions that the latest generation of numerical models of the…
Increasingly sophisticated observational tools and techniques are now being developed for probing the nature of interstellar turbulence. At the same time, theoretical advances in understanding the nature of turbulence and its effects on the…
(Abridged) We discuss the nonlinear development of the isobaric mode of thermal instability (TI) in the context of the atomic interstellar medium (ISM), in order to assess the ability of TI to establish a well-segregated multi-phase…
Turbulence is ubiquitous in the insterstellar medium and plays a major role in several processes such as the formation of dense structures and stars, the stability of molecular clouds, the amplification of magnetic fields, and the…
We present results from multi-epoch neutral hydrogen (HI) absorption observations of six bright pulsars with the Arecibo telescope. Moving through the interstellar medium (ISM) with transverse velocities of 10--150 AU/yr, these pulsars have…
Context: The gas density structure of the cold molecular phase of the interstellar medium is the main controller of star formation. Aims: A theoretical framework is proposed to describe the structural content of the density field in…
The role of supersonic turbulence in structuring the interstellar medium (ISM) remains an unsettled question. Here, this problem is investigated using a newexact law of compressible isothermal hydrodynamic turbulence, which involves…
This paper describes some interesting properties of waves in, and oscillations of, the interstellar medium in the direction normal to the plane of the Galaxy. Our purpose is to examine possible reasons for four observed phenomena: the…
We describe the use of pulsars to study small-scale neutral structure in the interstellar medium (ISM). Because pulsars are high velocity objects, the pulsar-Earth line of sight sweeps rapidly across the ISM. Multiepoch measurements of…
The interstellar medium (ISM) provides a unique laboratory for highly supersonic, driven hydrodynamics turbulence. We present a theory of such turbulence, confirm it by numerical simulations, and use the results to explain observational…
We study, by means of adaptive mesh refinement hydro- and magnetohydrodynamical simulations that cover a wide range of scales (from kpc to sub-parsec), the dimension of the most dissipative structures and the injection scale of the…
The interstellar medium (ISM) of our Galaxy is magnetized, compressible and turbulent, influencing many key ISM properties, like star formation, cosmic ray transport, and metal and phase mixing. Yet, basic statistics describing…
We provide a brief overview of recent advances and outstanding issues in simulations of interstellar turbulence, including isothermal models for interior structure of molecular clouds and larger-scale multiphase models designed to simulate…
Observations have suggested substantial departures from pressure equilibrium in the interstellar medium (ISM) in the plane of the Galaxy, even on scales under 50 pc. Nevertheless, multi-phase models of the ISM assume at least locally…
There is a strong connection between the formation of a disk galaxy and the properties of the interstellar medium (ISM). Theoretical work has typically either focused on the cosmological buildup of a galaxy with a relatively crude model for…
I review recent results from numerical simulations on the structure and dynamics of the ISM, and attempt to put together a coherent dynamical scenario. In particular, I discuss results on 1) the spatial distribution of the gas components,…