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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 9.

Global baroclinicity statistics in the steady-state SN-driven turbulence. The same diagnostics as in Figure 8 are shown, but now evaluated in the statistically steady state of SN-driven turbulence. The results demonstrate that the same mechanism responsible for initially driving the turbulence continues to dominate its maintenance: the low-volume, unstable layer between the hot and warm plasma in each SNR produces the vast majority of the baroclinicity (and hence incompressible turbulence). Regions with ﹩| {\boldsymbol{\nabla }}\rho \times {\boldsymbol{\nabla }}P/{\rho }^{2}| /{\langle {({\boldsymbol{\nabla }}\rho \times {\boldsymbol{\nabla }}P/{\rho }^{2})}^{2}\rangle }^{1/2}\gt \tau ﹩ contain ≈70% of the total baroclinic amplitude, confirming that the unstable layers remain, to leading order, the primary engines of the incompressible turbulence even in steady state.

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