Line-of-sight statistical methods for turbulent medium: VCS for emission and absorption lines

TL;DR

The paper introduces the Velocity Coordinate Spectrum (VCS), a novel statistical method for analyzing turbulence in astrophysical media using spectral line data, applicable to both emission and absorption lines, even with limited spatial resolution.

Contribution

It presents VCS as a versatile technique for turbulence analysis that works with unresolved sources and can be applied to absorption lines, enabling detailed turbulence tomography.

Findings

VCS can retrieve turbulence spectra from unresolved emission data.

The method applies to absorption lines, including saturated ones, using optical depth.

Combining multiple absorption lines allows turbulence tomography.

Abstract

We present an overview of the Velocity Coordinate Spectrum (VCS), a new technique for studying astrophysical turbulence that utilizes the line-of-sight statistics of Doppler-broadened spectral lines. We consider the retrieval of turbulence spectra from emission intensity observations of both high and low spatial resolution and find that the VCS allows one to study turbulence even when the emitting turbulent volume is not spatially resolved. This opens interesting prospects for using the technique for extragalactic research. VCS developed for spectral emission lines is applicable to absorption lines as well if the optical depth is used instead of intensity. VCS for absorption lines in point-source spectra benefit from effectively narrow beam and does not require dense sky coverage by sampling directions. Even strongly saturated absorption lines still carry the information about the small scale turbulence, albeit limited to the wings of a line. Combining different absorption lines one can develop tomography of the turbulence in the interstellar gas in all its complexity.