paper

Hierarchical Structure of Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence In Position-Position-Velocity Space

arXiv:1206.4703 · doi:10.1088/0004-637X/770/2/141

Abstract

Magnetohydrodynamic turbulence is able to create hierarchical structures in the interstellar medium that are correlated on a wide range of scales via the energy cascade. We use hierarchical tree diagrams known as dendrograms to characterize structures in synthetic Position-Position-Velocity (PPV) emission cubes of optically thin isothermal magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. We show that the structures and degree of hierarchy observed in PPV space are related to the physics of the gas, i.e. self-gravity and the global sonic and Alfvenic Mach number. Simulations with higher Alfvenic Mach number, self-gravity and supersonic flows display enhanced hierarchical structure. We observed a strong sonic and Alfvenic dependency when we apply the the statistical moments (i.e. mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis) to the dendrogram distribution. Larger magnetic field and sonic Mach number correspond to larger values of the moments. Application of the dendrogram to 3D density cubes, also known as Position-Position-Position cubes (PPP), reveals that the dominant emission contours in PPP and PPV are related for supersonic gas but not for subsonic. We also explore the effects of smoothing, thermal broadening and velocity resolution on the dendrograms in order to make our study more applicable to observational data. These results all point to hierarchical tree diagrams as being a promising additional tool for studying ISM turbulence and star forming regions in the direction of obtaining information on the degree of self-gravity, the Mach numbers and the complicated relationship between PPV and PPP.

submitted to ApJ

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