Interstellar Turbulence Driving by Galactic Spiral Shocks
@article{Kim2006InterstellarTD, title={Interstellar Turbulence Driving by Galactic Spiral Shocks}, author={Chang-Goo Kim and Woong-Tae Kim and Eve C. Ostriker}, journal={The Astrophysical Journal Letters}, year={2006}, volume={649}, pages={L13 - L16} }
Spiral shocks are potentially a major source of turbulence in the interstellar medium. To address this problem quantitatively, we use numerical simulations to investigate gas flow across spiral arms in vertically stratified, self-gravitating, magnetized models of galactic disks. Our models are isothermal, quasi-axisymmetric, and local in the quasi-radial direction while global in the vertical direction. We find that a stellar spiral potential perturbation promptly induces a spiral shock in the…
38 Citations
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