A model for the cross section of a turbulent, radiative jet or wake

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple analytical model for the cross section of turbulent, radiative jets or wakes, useful for interpreting astrophysical outflows like HH jets with minimal parameters.

Contribution

It presents a new, straightforward analytical model with only four free parameters for analyzing the cross section of turbulent, radiative jets or wakes.

Findings

Model effectively fits observed radial velocity profiles.

Four free parameters suffice to describe the jet or wake structure.

Application demonstrated on HH 110 jet data.

Abstract

We present an analytical model for the cross section of a turbulent, radiative jet or wake. This model is appropriate for modeling HH jets, or "wakes" left behind by "astrophysical bullets". Even though the model is very simple, it has the benign property of only having four free parameters (the outer radius of the beam, the axial velocity, the velocity at the edge of the beam, and the turbulent velocity width), which can be derived by fitting the radial velocity and line width cross sections of an observed outflow. We illustrate how to do such fits using previously published spectroscopic data of the HH 110 jet.