Speaker
Andrea Gatto
(MPA)
Description
Turbulence is believed to be a crucial component of the interstellar medium's energetic budget. However, its origin and injection scales are still a matter of debate. Following e.g. Mac Low & Klessen (2004), energy injection from Supernova explosions is able to generate and maintain the observed level of turbulence in the ISM, at least in ""normal"" star-forming galaxies. In addition, a non-negligible contribution might come from winds of high-mass stars.
Using 3D, adaptive-mesh-refinement simulations, we model the generation of turbulence by stellar feedback. Within a representative piece of the multi-phase ISM, we inject stellar winds, following the stellar evolution algorithm of Ekstrom et al. (2012), and Supernova explosions, and we discuss the relative importance of these processes for driving turbulence. Furthermore, we compare how much feedback energy input is needed to maintain a certain level of turbulence with respect to the case of ""artificially"" driven turbulence. We show how the turbulence decays in a cooling flow and how this decay differs from the conventional, theoretically well established case of an isothermal medium.
Author
Andrea Gatto
(MPA)