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arXiv · 2511.12418

Examining Turbulence in Galactic Molecular Clouds. II. Turbulence Cascade Beyond the Scale of Giant Molecular Clouds

Yuehui Ma·Miaomiao Zhang·Hongchi Wang·Xuepeng Chen·Zhenyi Yue·Suziye He·Xiangyu Ou·Li Sun
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Abstract

We use $^{12}$CO (J=1--0) data from the MWISP survey to investigate turbulence in a $\sim$kpc-scale segment of the Local Arm. By slicing the position-position-velocity cube into narrow layers that follow the Galactic-rotation trend in the $L$-$V$ diagram, we find that the structure functions (SFs) and spatial power spectra (SPS) of the $^{12}$CO (J=1--0) line velocity and intensity exhibit consistent scaling behaviors across all layers, demonstrating that the molecular gas forms a single, coherent turbulent field with energy cascading from $\sim 200$~pc down to parsec scales. The SPS power-law slopes of both the intensity and velocity fields approach the values expected from turbulence models. Cloud-to-cloud velocity SFs based on the molecular clouds located in the region follow the same extended self-similarity scaling (ESS) as the pixel-based statistics, indicating that inter-cloud motions are part of the same large-scale turbulent cascade. Together, these results provide direct observational evidence that molecular clouds are not dynamically isolated entities but are embedded within a larger-scale turbulent flow that links galactic dynamics to star formation on cloud scales.

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Yuehui Ma, Miaomiao Zhang, Hongchi Wang, Xuepeng Chen, Zhenyi Yue, Suziye He, Xiangyu Ou, Li Sun. 2025-11-16. Examining Turbulence in Galactic Molecular Clouds. II. Turbulence Cascade Beyond the Scale of Giant Molecular Clouds. https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.12418

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