Impurity flows and plateau-regime poloidal density variation in a tokamak pedestal

In the pedestal of a tokamak, the sharp radial gradients of density and temperature can give rise to poloidal variation in the density of impurities. At the same time, the flow of the impurity species is modified relative to the conventional neoclassical result. In this paper, these changes to the density and flow of a collisional impurity species are calculated for the case when the main ions are in the plateau regime. In this regime it is found that the impurity density can be higher at either the inboard or outboard side. This finding differs from earlier results for banana- or Pfirsch-Schl\"uter-regime main ions, in which case the impurity density is always higher at the inboard side in the absence of rotation. Finally, the modifications to the impurity flow are also given for the other regimes of main-ion collisionality.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Physics of Plasma

The Gaia-ESO Survey: Dynamical analysis of the L1688 region in Ophiuchus

The Gaia ESO Public Spectroscopic Survey (GES) is providing the astronomical community with high-precision measurements of many stellar parameters including radial velocities (RVs) of stars belonging to several young clusters and star-forming regions. One of the main goals of the young cluster observations is to study their dynamical evolution and provide insight into their future, revealing whether they will eventually disperse to populate the field rather than evolve into bound open clusters. In this paper we report the analysis of the dynamical state of L1688 in the ρ Ophiuchi molecular cloud using the dataset provided by the GES consortium. We performed the membership selection of the more than 300 objects observed. Using the presence of the lithium absorption and the location in the Hertzspung-Russell diagram, we identify 45 already known members and two new association members. We provide accurate RVs for all 47 confirmed members. A dynamical analysis, after accounting for unresolved binaries and errors, shows that the stellar surface population of L1688 has a velocity dispersion σ ~ 1.14 ± 0.35 km s-1 that is consistent with being in virial equilibrium and is bound with a ~80% probability. We also find a velocity gradient in the stellar surface population of ~1.0 km s-1 pc-1 in the northwest-southeast direction, which is consistent with that found for the pre-stellar dense cores, and we discuss the possibility of sequential and triggered star formation in L1688

Live fast, die young: GMC lifetimes in the FIRE cosmological simulations of Milky Way mass galaxies

We present the first measurement of the lifetimes of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in cosmological simulations at z = 0, using the Latte suite of FIRE-2 simulations of Milky Way (MW) mass galaxies. We track GMCs with total gas mass ≳105 M⊙ at high spatial (∼1 pc), mass (7100 M⊙), and temporal (1 Myr) resolution. Our simulated GMCs are consistent with the distribution of masses for massive GMCs in the MW and nearby galaxies. We find GMC lifetimes of 5-7 Myr, or 1-2 freefall times, on average, with less than 2 per cent of clouds living longer than 20 Myr. We find decreasing GMC lifetimes with increasing virial parameter, and weakly increasing GMC lifetimes with galactocentric radius, implying that environment affects the evolutionary cycle of GMCs. However, our GMC lifetimes show no systematic dependence on GMC mass or amount of star formation. These results are broadly consistent with inferences from the literature and provide an initial investigation into ultimately understanding the physical processes that govern GMC lifetimes in a cosmological setting