Studies of Turbulence Dissipation in Taurus Molecular Cloud with Core Velocity Dispersion (CVD)

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new data analysis method called core-velocity-dispersion (CVD) to directly measure turbulence dissipation rates in the Taurus molecular cloud, providing insights into star formation environments.

Contribution

The paper presents the first direct measurement of turbulence dissipation rate in Taurus using CVD, advancing beyond previous semi-analytic estimates.

Findings

Measured dissipation rate: (0.45 ± 0.05)×10^{33} erg s^{-1}

Dissipation rate aligns with dimensional analysis estimates

Consistent with energy injection rates from molecular outflows and bubbles

Abstract

Turbulence dissipation is an important process affecting the energy balance in molecular clouds, the birth place of stars. Previously, the rate of turbulence dissipation is often estimated with semi-analytic formulae from simulation. Recently we developed a data analysis technique called core-velocity-dispersion (CVD), which, for the first time, provides direct measurements of the turbulence dissipation rate in Taurus, a star forming cloud. The thus measured dissipation rate of $(0.45\pm 0.05)\times 10^{33} {\rm erg\ s^{-1}}$ is similar to those from dimensional analysis and also consistent with the previous energy injection rate based on molecular outflows and bubbles.