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The SMC super-shells as probes of the turbulent dynamics of the ISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2006

Itzhak Goldman
Itzhak Goldman*
Affiliation:
Department of Basic Sciences, Afeka Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering, Tel Aviv, Israel Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel email: goldman@wise.tau.ac.il
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Abstract

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The spatial power spectrum of the HI 21 cm intensity in the Small Magellanic Cloud (Stanimirovic et al. 1999) is a power law over scales as large as those of the SMC itself. It was interpreted as due to turbulence by Goldman (2000) and by Stanimirovic & Lazarian (2001). The question is whether the power spectrum is indeed the result of a dynamical turbulence or is merely the result of a structured static density. In the turbulence interpretation of Goldman (2000) the turbulence was generated by the tidal effects of the last close passage of the LMC about 0.2 Gyr ago. The turbulence time-scale was estimated by Goldman to be 0.4 Gyr, so the turbulence has not decayed yet. Staveley-Smith et al. (1997) observed in the SMC about five hundreds of HI super shells. Their age is more than an order of magnitude smaller than the turbulence age. Therefore, if the turbulence explanation holds, their observed radial velocities should reflect the turbulence in the gas in which they formed. In the present work we analyze the observed radial velocities of the super shells. We find that the velocities indeed manifest the statistical spatial correlations expected from turbulence. The turbulence spectrum is consistent with that obtained by Goldman (2000).

Keywords

TurbulenceISMSMCSuper Shells
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 2 , Symposium S237: Triggered Star Formation in a Turbulent ISM , August 2006 , pp. 96 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2007

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