An explicit scheme for multifluid magnetohydrodynamics

When modeling astrophysical fluid flows, it is often appropriate to discard the canonical magnetohydrodynamic approximation thereby freeing the magnetic field to diffuse with respect to the bulk velocity field. As a consequence, however, the induction equation can become problematic to solve via standard explicit techniques. In particular, the Hall diffusion term admits fast-moving whistler waves which can impose a vanishing timestep limit. Within an explicit differencing framework, a multifluid scheme for weakly ionised plasmas is presented which relies upon a new approach to integrating the induction equation efficiently. The first component of this approach is a relatively unknown method of accelerating the integration of parabolic systems by enforcing stability over large compound timesteps rather than over each of the constituent substeps. This method, Super Time Stepping, proves to be very effective in applying a part of the Hall term up to a known critical value. The excess of the Hall term above this critical value is then included via a new scheme for pure Hall diffusion.Comment: 8 pages; 4 figures; accepted by MNRAS; minor corrections to equations; addition of appendi

The mass-velocity and intensity-velocity relations in jet-driven molecular outflows

We use numerical simulations to examine the mass-velocity and intensity-velocity relations in the CO J=2-1 and H$_2$ S(1)1-0 lines for jet-driven molecular outflows. Contrary to previous expectations, we find that the mass-velocity relation for the swept-up gas is a single power-law, with a shallow slope $\simeq -1.5$ and no break to a steeper slope at high velocities. An analytic bowshock model with no post-shock mixing is shown to reproduce this behaviour very well. We show that molecular dissociation and the temperature dependence of the line emissivity are both critical in defining the shape of the line profiles at velocities above $\sim$ 20 km s$^{-1}$. In particular, the simulated CO J=2-1 intensity-velocity relation does show a break in slope, even though the underlying mass distribution does not. These predicted CO profiles are found to compare remarkably well with observations of molecular outflows, both in terms of the slopes at low and high velocities and in terms of the range of break velocities at which the change in slope occurs. Shallower slopes are predicted at high velocity in higher excitation lines, such as H$_2$ S(1)1-0. This work indicates that, in jet-driven outflows, the CO J=2-1 intensity profile reflects the slope of the underlying mass-velocity distribution only at velocities $\le$ 20 km/s, and that higher temperature tracers are required to probe the mass distribution at higher speed.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

MARCOS, a numerical tool for the simulation of multiple time-dependent non-linear diffusive shock acceleration

We present a new code aimed at the simulation of diffusive shock acceleration (DSA), and discuss various test cases which demonstrate its ability to study DSA in its full time-dependent and non-linear developments. We present the numerical methods implemented, coupling the hydrodynamical evolution of a parallel shock (in one space dimension) and the kinetic transport of the cosmic-rays (CR) distribution function (in one momentum dimension), as first done by Falle. Following Kang and Jones and collaborators, we show how the adaptive mesh refinement technique (AMR) greatly helps accommodating the extremely demanding numerical resolution requirements of realistic (Bohm-like) CR diffusion coefficients. We also present the paral lelization of the code, which allows us to run many successive shocks at the cost of a single shock, and thus to present the first direct numerical simulations of linear and non-linear multiple DSA, a mechanism of interest in various astrophysical environments such as superbubbles, galaxy clusters and early cosmological flows.Comment: accepted for publication in MNRAS by the Royal Astronomical Society and Blackwell Publishin

Nonideal Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulent Decay in Molecular Clouds

It is well known that non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic effects are important in the dynamics of molecular clouds: both ambipolar diffusion and possibly the Hall effect have been identified as significant. We present the results of a suite of simulations with a resolution of 512-cubed of turbulent decay in molecular clouds incorporating a simplified form of both ambipolar diffusion and the Hall effect simultaneously. The initial velocity field in the turbulence is varied from being super-Alfvénic and hypersonic, through to trans-Alfvénic but still supersonic

A Three‐Dimensional Numerical Method for Modelling Weakly Ionized Plasmas

Astrophysical fluids under the influence of magnetic fields are often subjected to single- or two-fluid approximations. In the case of weakly ionized plasmas, however, this can be inappropriate due to distinct responses from the multiple constituent species to both collisional and non-collisional forces. As a result, in dense molecular clouds and protostellar accretion discs, for instance, the conductivity of the plasma may be highly anisotropic leading to phenomena such as Hall and ambipolar diffusion strongly influencing the dynamics