On the use of fractional Brownian motion simulations to determine the 3D statistical properties of interstellar gas

Abstract

Based on fractional Brownian motion (fBm) simulations of 3D gas density and velocity fields, we present a study of the statistical properties of spectro-imagery observations (channel maps, integrated emission, and line centroid velocity) in the case of an optically thin medium at various temperatures. The power spectral index gamma_W of the integrated emission is identified with that of the 3D density field (gamma_n) provided the medium's depth is at least of the order of the largest transverse scale in the image, and the power spectrum of the centroid velocity map is found to have the same index gamma_C as that of the velocity field (gamma_v). Further tests with non-fBm density and velocity fields show that this last result holds, and is not modified either by the effects of density-velocity correlations. A comparison is made with the theoretical predictions of Lazarian & Pogosyan (2000).Comment: 28 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ. For preprint with higher-resolution figures, see http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~mamd/miville_fbm2003.pd