Image Details

Choose export citation format:

Supernovae Drive Large-scale, Incompressible Turbulence through Small-scale Instabilities

  • Authors: James R. Beattie

James R. Beattie 2026 The Astrophysical Journal Letters 1004 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 1.

2D slices of the rms normalized vorticity, ﹩\omega /{\langle {\omega }^{2}\rangle }^{1/2}﹩ (ω = ∣ × u∣; left in each panel), and baroclinicity (ρ × P/ρ2; right in each panel), for 48 randomly selected SNRs extracted from SN-driven turbulence simulations in J. R. Beattie et al. (2025c). The most intense ω regions, which are signatures of incompressible turbulence, correspond to the strongest ρ × P/ρ2 structures. The ρ × P/ρ2 structures closely trace the corrugated layer between the warm and hot plasma. J. R. Beattie et al. (2025c) find that this layer generates ω values three orders of magnitude larger than any other vorticity source in an SN-driven galactic disk environment. In this study, I show that these layers drive incompressible turbulence with a velocity spectrum ∝k−3/2, the same spectrum as is found in global SN-driven turbulence simulations of a galactic disk (I. Connor et al. 2026). An animation of this panel with a slider for the vertical bar between the vorticity and baroclinicity can be found at astrojames.github.io/movies/.

Other Images in This Article

Show More

Copyright and Terms & Conditions

Additional terms of reuse