Driven Multifluid MHD Molecular Cloud Turbulence

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to explore how multifluid magnetohydrodynamic effects influence turbulence in molecular clouds, revealing significant impacts on velocity and magnetic field spectra at certain scales.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed numerical analysis of 4-fluid MHD turbulence in molecular clouds, incorporating observationally based parameters and examining multifluid effects on turbulence characteristics.

Findings

Multifluid effects significantly influence velocity and magnetic spectra at scales ≥0.05 pc.

Species PDFs are close to log-normal, with charged species slightly less flattened than neutrals.

Multifluid effects do not significantly change centroid velocity structure functions.

Abstract

It is believed that turbulence may have a significant impact on star formation and the dynamics and evolution of the molecular clouds in which this occurs. It is also known that non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic effects influence the nature of this turbulence. We present the results of a numerical study of 4-fluid MHD turbulence in which the dynamics of electrons, ions, charged dust grains and neutrals and their interactions are followed. The parameters describing the fluid being simulated are based directly on observations of molecular clouds. We find that the velocity and magnetic field power spectra are strongly influenced by multifluid effects on length-scales at least as large as 0.05 pc. The PDFs of the various species in the system are all found to be close to log-normal, with charged species having a slightly less platykurtic (flattened) distribution than the neutrals. We find that the introduction of multifluid effects does not significantly alter the structure functions of the centroid velocity increment.