Quantifying the impact of stellar feedback on molecular clouds
Abstract
Although the origin of molecular cloud turbulence remains debated, one possibility is that stellar feedback injects enough energy to drive observed motions on parsec scales. To investigate this possibility, we use magnetohydrodynamic simulations where we vary the stellar mass-loss rates and magnetic field strength. We generate synthetic 12CO(1-0) maps assuming that the simulation is at the distance of the nearby Perseus molecular cloud. By comparing different initial conditions and evolutionary times, we are able to identify differences in our synthetic observations. Using a variety of statistical techniques proposed in the literature, we quantify the differences by calculating the first, second, and higher order moment maps of the data cubes, analyzing the power spectrum, and convolving the data with Gaussian wavelets. We find that many turbulent statistics, such as the spectral correlation function, principal component analysis, and delta-variance, are sensitive to changes in mass-loss rates and/or turbulent structure. This demonstrates that stellar feedback influences molecular cloud turbulence and may be characterized using certain statistical metrics.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #227
- Pub Date:
- January 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AAS...22731903B