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Main Authors: Foley, Michael M., Mocz, Philip, Burkhart, Blakesley, Hernquist, Lars, Goodman, Alyssa
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13291
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author Foley, Michael M.
Mocz, Philip
Burkhart, Blakesley
Hernquist, Lars
Goodman, Alyssa
author_facet Foley, Michael M.
Mocz, Philip
Burkhart, Blakesley
Hernquist, Lars
Goodman, Alyssa
contents Supersonic isothermal turbulence is ubiquitous in the interstellar medium. This work presents high-resolution AREPO hydrodynamical simulations of isolated shocks moving through supersonic turbulence to study the development and evolution of turbulence in the pre- and post-shock regions. We find that shocks can amplify turbulent energy in the post-shock region while inducing a preferential orientation for the vorticity. This results in the creation of anisotropic turbulence in the post-shock region. Turbulent energy and dissipation are also strongly enhanced near the shock front. By applying typical scalings from the cold neutral medium to simulations, we find that shocks moving into turbulence on the scale of superbubbles can generate compressive flows on the order of $10^{3} M_{\odot}$/Myr. Our results also show good agreement with related studies on turbulent fluctuations generated by shocks in pure fluid mechanics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_13291
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Development of Turbulence in Post-shock Regions
Foley, Michael M.
Mocz, Philip
Burkhart, Blakesley
Hernquist, Lars
Goodman, Alyssa
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Supersonic isothermal turbulence is ubiquitous in the interstellar medium. This work presents high-resolution AREPO hydrodynamical simulations of isolated shocks moving through supersonic turbulence to study the development and evolution of turbulence in the pre- and post-shock regions. We find that shocks can amplify turbulent energy in the post-shock region while inducing a preferential orientation for the vorticity. This results in the creation of anisotropic turbulence in the post-shock region. Turbulent energy and dissipation are also strongly enhanced near the shock front. By applying typical scalings from the cold neutral medium to simulations, we find that shocks moving into turbulence on the scale of superbubbles can generate compressive flows on the order of $10^{3} M_{\odot}$/Myr. Our results also show good agreement with related studies on turbulent fluctuations generated by shocks in pure fluid mechanics.
title Development of Turbulence in Post-shock Regions
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13291