Molecular cloud abundances and anomalous diffusion

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

4 pages, 8 figures

Scientific paper

10.1002/asna.200710809

The chemistry of molecular clouds has been studied for decades, with an increasingly general and sophisticated treatment of the reactions involved. Yet the treatment of turbulent diffusion has remained extremely sketchy, assuming simple Fickian diffusion with a scalar diffusivity D. However, turbulent flows similar to those in the interstellar medium are known to give rise to anomalous diffusion phenomena, more specifically superdiffusion (increase of the diffusivity with the spatial scales involved). This paper considers to what extent and in what sense superdiffusion modifies molecular abundances in interstellar clouds. For this first exploration of the subject we employ a very rough treatment of the chemistry and the effect of non-unifom cloud density on the diffusion equation is also treated in a simplified way. The results nevertheless clearly demonstrate that the effect of superdiffusion is quite significant, abundance values at a given radius being modified by order of unity factors. The sense and character of this influence is highly nontrivial.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Molecular cloud abundances and anomalous diffusion does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Molecular cloud abundances and anomalous diffusion, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Molecular cloud abundances and anomalous diffusion will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-611054

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.