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Title: Atomic chemistry in turbulent astrophysical media II: Effect of the redshift zero metagalactic background

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)
 [1];  [2]
  1. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  2. Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Here, we carry out direct numerical simulations of turbulent astrophysical media exposed to the redshift zero metagalactic background. The simulations assume solar composition and explicitly track ionizations, recombinations, and ion-by-ion radiative cooling for hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, neon, sodium, magnesium, silicon, sulfur, calcium, and iron. Each run reaches a global steady state that depends not only on the ionization parameter, $U,$ and mass-weighted average temperature, $${T}_{{\rm{MW}}},$$ but also on the one-dimensional turbulent velocity dispersion, $${\sigma }_{{\rm{1D}}}$$. We carry out runs that span a grid of models with U ranging from 0 to 10–1 and $${\sigma }_{{\rm{1D}}}$$ ranging from 3.5 to 58 km s–1, and we vary the product of the mean density and the driving scale of the turbulence, $${nL},$$ which determines the average temperature of the medium, from $${nL}={10}^{16}$$ to $${nL}={10}^{20}$$ cm–2. The turbulent Mach numbers of our simulations vary from $$M\approx 0.5$$ for the lowest velocity dispersion cases to $$M\approx 20$$ for the largest velocity dispersion cases. When $$M\lesssim 1,$$ turbulent effects are minimal, and the species abundances are reasonably described as those of a uniform photoionized medium at a fixed temperature. On the other hand, when $$M\gtrsim 1,$$ dynamical simulations such as the ones carried out here are required to accurately predict the species abundances. We gather our results into a set of tables to allow future redshift zero studies of the intergalactic medium to account for turbulent effects.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Lab., Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-07NA27344
OSTI ID:
1281681
Report Number(s):
LLNL-JRNL-677144
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 818, Issue 2; ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 12 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (13)

Challenges and Techniques for Simulating Line Emission journal September 2018
The Effect of Turbulence on Nebular Emission Line Ratios journal November 2017
Column Density Profiles of Cold Clouds Driven by Galactic Outflows journal September 2018
Modeling Photoionized Turbulent Material in the Circumgalactic Medium journal September 2018
Nonequilibrium Ionization States within Galactic Outflows: Explaining Their O vi and N v Column Densities journal April 2019
Catastrophic Cooling in Superwinds: Line Emission and Non-equilibrium Ionization journal December 2019
Modeling Star Formation as a Markov Process in a Supersonic Gravoturbulent Medium journal September 2018
The Effect Of Turbulence On Nebular Emission Line Ratios text January 2018
The Effect Of Turbulence On Nebular Emission Line Ratios text January 2018
The Effect of Turbulence on Nebular Emission Line Ratios text January 2017
Modeling Star Formation as a Markov Process in a Supersonic Gravoturbulent Medium text January 2018
Non-equilibrium Ionization States Within Galactic Outflows: Explaining Their O VI and N V Column Densities text January 2019
Catastrophic Cooling in Superwinds: Line Emission and Non-equilibrium Ionization text January 2019

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Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ISM: abundances
ISM: atoms
astrochemistry
turbulence