The Universality of Turbulence in Galactic Molecular Clouds

Abstract

The universality of interstellar turbulence is examined from observed structure functions of 27 giant molecular clouds and Monte Carlo modeling. We show that the structure functions, dv=v0 l^gamma, derived from wide field imaging of CO J=1-0 emission from individual clouds are described by a narrow range in the scaling exponent, gamma, and the scaling coefficient, v0. The similarity of turbulent structure functions emphasizes the universality of turbulence in the molecular interstellar medium and accounts for the cloud-to-cloud size-line width relationship initially identified by Larson (1981). The degree of turbulence universality is quantified by Monte Carlo simulations that reproduce the mean squared velocity residuals of the observed cloud-to-cloud relationship. Upper limits to the variation of the scaling amplitudes and exponents for molecular clouds are ~10-20%. The measured invariance of turbulence for molecular clouds with vastly different sizes, environments, and star formation activity suggests a common formation mechanism such as converging turbulent flows within the diffuse ISM and a limited contribution of energy from sources within the cloud with respect to large scale driving mechanisms.