Ambipolar Drift Heating in Turbulent Molecular Clouds

1999/10/07 by Paolo Padoan, Ellen Zweibel, ; Ellen Zweibel +2 · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena #Optical properties and cooling technologies in crystalline materials #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/309299

37 pages, 9 figures included

arxiv created 1999/10/07 · openalex publication_date 2000/09/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

We present calculations of frictional heating by ion-neutral drift in three-dimensional simulations of turbulent, magnetized molecular clouds. We show that ambipolar drift heating is a strong function of position in a turbulent cloud, and its average value can be significantly larger than the average cosmic-ray heating rate. The heating rate per unit volume due to ambipolar drift, H AD = | × | 2 /ρ i ν in ~ B 4 /(16π 2 L ρ i ν in ), is found to depend on the rms Alfvénic Mach number, A , and on the average field strength, as H AD ∝ ⟨| B |⟩ 4 . This implies that the typical scale of variation of the magnetic field, L B , is inversely proportional to A , which we also demonstrate.

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