A Guide to Comparisons of Star Formation Simulations with Observations

Abstract

We review an approach to observation-theory comparisons we call "Taste-Testing." In this approach, synthetic observations are made of numerical simulations, and then both real and synthetic observations are "tasted" (compared) using a variety of statistical tests. We first lay out arguments for bringing theory to observational space rather than observations to theory space. Next, we explain that generating synthetic observations is only a step along the way to the quantitative, statistical, taste tests that offer the most insight. We offer a set of examples focused on polarimetry, scattering and emission by dust, and spectral-line mapping in starforming regions. We conclude with a discussion of the connection between statistical tests used to date and the physics we seek to understand. In particular, we suggest that the "lognormal" nature of molecular clouds can be created by the interaction of many random processes, as can the lognormal nature of the IMF, so that the fact that both the "Clump Mass Function" (CMF) and IMF appear lognormal does not necessarily imply a direct relationship between them.

astro-ph version added upon publication in proceedings of IAU270; 2011IAUS..270..511G

References in corpus (10)

• Structural Analysis of Molecular Clouds: Dendrograms
• The Efficiency of Grain Alignment in Dense Interstellar Clouds: A Reassessment of Constraints from Near Infrared Polarization
• The Perils of Clumpfind: The Mass Spectrum of Sub-structures in Molecular Clouds
• The Power Spectrum of Supersonic Turbulence in Perseus
• Molecular Line Emission from Massive Protostellar Disks: Predictions for ALMA and the EVLA
• The structure of molecular clouds and the universality of the clump mass function
• The Kinematics of Molecular Cloud Cores in the Presence of Driven and Decaying Turbulence: Comparisons with Observations
• On the Evolution of the Dense Core Mass Function
• On the relative motions of dense cores and envelopes in star-forming molecular clouds
• The Interplay of Turbulence & Magnetic Fields in Star-Forming Regions: Simulations and Observations

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Topological signatures of interstellar magnetic fields - I. Betti numbers and persistence diagrams