Direct Evidence for Two-Fluid Effects in Molecular Clouds

Details Direct Evidence for Two-Fluid Effects in Molecular Clouds Direct Evidence for Two-Fluid Effects in Molecular Clouds

2010-02-18

arxiv.org/abs/1002.3443v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Galaxy Astrophysics

18 pages, 4 figures, submitted to MNRAS

Scientific paper

We present a combination of theoretical and simulation-based examinations of the role of two-fluid ambipolar drift on molecular line widths. The dissipation provided by ion-neutral interactions can produce a significant difference between the widths of neutral molecules and the widths of ionic species, comparable to the sound speed. We demonstrate that Alfven waves and certain families of magnetosonic waves become strongly damped on scales comparable to the ambipolar diffusion scale. Using the RIEMANN code, we simulate two-fluid turbulence with ionization fractions ranging from 10^{-2} to 10^{-6}. We show that the wave damping causes the power spectrum of the ion velocity to drop below that of the neutral velocity when measured on a relative basis. Following a set of motivational observations by Li & Houde (2008), we produce synthetic line width-size relations that shows a difference between the ion and neutral line widths, illustrating that two-fluid effects can have an observationally detectable role in modifying the MHD turbulence in the clouds.

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