Article,

Density distributions of outflow-driven turbulence

, , and .
Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc., (Apr 24, 2013)
DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slt044

Abstract

Protostellar jets and outflows are signatures of star formation and promising mechanisms for driving supersonic turbulence in molecular clouds. We quantify outflow-driven turbulence through three-dimensional numerical simulations using an isothermal version of the robust total variation diminishing code. We drive turbulence in real space using a simplified spherical outflow model, analyse the data through density probability distribution functions (PDFs), and investigate the core formation rate per free-fall time (CFR<SUB>ff</SUB>). The real-space turbulence-driving method produces a negatively skewed density PDF possessing an enhanced tail on the low-density side. It deviates from the log-normal distributions typically obtained from Fourier-space turbulence driving at low densities, but can provide a good fit at high densities, particularly in terms of mass-weighted rather than volume-weighted density PDF. Due to this fact, we suggest that the CFR<SUB>ff</SUB> determined from a Fourier-driven turbulence model could be comparable to that of our particular real-space-driving model, which has a ratio of solenoidal to compressional components from the resulting turbulence velocity fields of &tilde;0.6.

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