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# The Magnetic Field as a Turbulence Suppressor in Molecular Cloud Formation

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### Abstract

We present magnetohydrodynamic simulations aimed at studying the effect of the magnetic field on the production of turbulence through various instabilities during the formation of molecular clouds (MCs) by converging flows. We particularly focus on the subsequent star formation (SF) activity. We study four magnetically supercritical models with magnetic field strengths $$B= 0$$, 1, 2, and 3 $$\mu$$G (corresponding to mass-to-flux ratios of $$\infty$$, 4.76, 2.38, and 1.59 times the critical value), with the magnetic field initially aligned with the flows. We find that, for increasing magnetic field strength, the clouds formed tend to be more massive, denser, less turbulent, and with higher SF activity. This causes the onset of star formation activity in the non-magnetic or more weakly magnetized cases to be delayed by a few Myr in comparison to the more strongly magnetized cases. We attribute this behavior to a suppression of the nonlinear thin shell instability (NTSI), which is the main mechanism responsible for turbulence generation in the forming clouds, by the mean magnetic field. This result is contrary to the standard notion that the magnetic field provides support to the clouds, thus reducing their SFR. However, our result is a completely nonlinear one, and could not be foreseen from simple linear considerations.

### Most cited references3

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### Modeling Dynamic Architectures Using Dy-BIP

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### A positive MUSCL-Hancock scheme for ideal magnetohydrodynamics

(2009)
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### A robust numerical scheme for highly compressible magnetohydrodynamics: Nonlinear stability, implementation and tests

The ideal MHD equations are a central model in astrophysics, and their solution relies upon stable numerical schemes. We present an implementation of a new method, which possesses excellent stability properties. Numerical tests demonstrate that the theoretical stability properties are valid in practice with negligible compromises to accuracy. The result is a highly robust scheme with state-of-the-art efficiency. The scheme's robustness is due to entropy stability, positivity and properly discretised Powell terms. The implementation takes the form of a modification of the MHD module in the FLASH code, an adaptive mesh refinement code. We compare the new scheme with the standard FLASH implementation for MHD. Results show comparable accuracy to standard FLASH with the Roe solver, but highly improved efficiency and stability, particularly for high Mach number flows and low plasma beta. The tests include 1D shock tubes, 2D instabilities and highly supersonic, 3D turbulence. We consider turbulent flows with RMS sonic Mach numbers up to 10, typical of gas flows in the interstellar medium. We investigate both strong initial magnetic fields and magnetic field amplification by the turbulent dynamo from extremely high plasma beta. The energy spectra show a reasonable decrease in dissipation with grid refinement, and at a resolution of 512^3 grid cells we identify a narrow inertial range with the expected power-law scaling. The turbulent dynamo exhibits exponential growth of magnetic pressure, with the growth rate twice as high from solenoidal forcing than from compressive forcing. Two versions of the new scheme are presented, using relaxation-based 3-wave and 5-wave approximate Riemann solvers, respectively. The 5-wave solver is more accurate in some cases, and its computational cost is close to the 3-wave solver.
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### Author and article information

###### Journal
2016-06-16
###### Article
1606.05343