Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Molecular Cloud Formation

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Kritsuk and his team study dynamics of magnetized turbulence and star formation in molecular clouds with numerical high-resolution simulations. The computations are done with the Enzo code, an Adaptive Mesh Refinement and grid-based hybrid code (hydrodymamics and N-body), which is designed to do simulations of astrophysical and cosmological structure formation. The self-consistent computations model effects such as gravity, differential rotation, and radiative transfer on the self-organization in compressible magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in the multiphase interstellar medium. The models here incorporate more complex physics, a higher dynamic range of resolved scales, and employ improved numerical methods. In particular, the modeling includes the scaling of multiphase MHD turbulence and its change with the turbulence magnetization. The simulations for the dynamic range of MHD models for molecular cloud formation utilize petascale computational facilities and attempt to resolve the inertial range of supersonic magnetized turbulence in the multiphase interstellar medium. This will test competing star formation models and phenomenological theories when the simulations are compared to observations. More broadly, a better understanding of turbulence is also needed for understanding the acceleration and propagation of energetic particles, transport of momentum and energy in various astrophysical systems. As part of this project, one graduate student will be trained in the development of numerical methods for modeling supersonic MHD flows, in large-scale parallel computer simulations, and in methods for statistical analysis and visualization of magnetized multiphase turbulent flows.