An Origin of Supersonic Motions in Interstellar Clouds

By H. Koyama, S. Inutsuka. 2001

290 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The propagation of a shock wave into an interstellar medium is investigated by two-dimensional numerical hydrodynamic calculation with cooling, heating, and thermal conduction. We present results of the high-resolution, two-dimensional calculations to follow the fragmentation that results from thermal instability in a shock-compressed layer. We find that the geometrically thin cooling layer behind the shock front fragments into small cloudlets. The cloudlets have supersonic velocity dispersion in the warm neutral medium, in which the fragments are embedded as cold condensations. The fragments tend to coalesce and become larger clouds.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1d3edb40feb61b1bdfd080a09bbde2d66c0cfc95

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. S. Glover
2. Ralf Klessen
3. Christoph Federrath
4. P. Hennebelle
5. M. Mac Low
6. Mark R. Krumholz
7. Volker Bromm
8. P. C. Clark

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. S. Glover
2. Ralf Klessen

Citations in the corpus

• Physical Processes in the Interstellar Medium (2014, background): “…can trigger a thermal instability, leading to the rapid production of a cloud of much denser, cooler gas (see e.g. Hennebelle & Pérault, 1999, 2000; Koyama & Inutsuka, 2002; Audit & Hennebelle, 2005; Heitsch et al., 2005; Vázquez-Semadeni et al., 2006; Hennebelle & Audit, 2007; Heitsch & Hartmann,…”