Studies of Turbulence Dissipation in Taurus Molecular Cloud with Core Velocity Dispersion (CVD)

Abstract

Turbulence dissipation is an important process affecting the energy balance in molecular clouds, the birth place of stars. Previously, the rate of turbulence dissipation is often estimated with semi-analytic formulae from simulation. Recently we developed a data analysis technique called core-velocity-dispersion (CVD), which, for the first time, provides direct measurements of the turbulence dissipation rate in Taurus, a star forming cloud. The thus measured dissipation rate of $(0.45\pm 0.05)\times 10^{33} {\rm erg\ s^{-1}}$ is similar to those from dimensional analysis and also consistent with the previous energy injection rate based on molecular outflows and bubbles.

Accepted by ApJ