2003/01/31 by Paolo Padoan, Raul Jimenez, Raúl Jiménez +3 · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph #nlin.CD #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.92.191102
published as Phys.Rev.Lett. 92 (2004) 191102 · published in Physical Review Letters
openalex publication_date 2004/05/14 · arxiv created 2004/05/31 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Supersonic turbulent flows of magnetized gas are believed to play an important role in the dynamics of star-forming clouds in galaxies. Understanding statistical properties of such flows is crucial for developing a theory of star formation. In this Letter we propose a unified approach for obtaining the velocity scaling in compressible and super-Alfvénic turbulence, valid for the arbitrary sonic Mach number, M(S). We demonstrate with numerical simulations that the scaling can be described with the She-Lévêque formalism, where only one parameter, interpreted as the Hausdorff dimension of the most intense dissipative structures, needs to be varied as a function of M(S). Our results thus provide a method for obtaining the velocity scaling in interstellar clouds once their Mach numbers have been inferred from observations.