Princeton University Star Formation/ISM Rendezvous (SFIR)

Radiative turbulent mixing layers arise whenever there is shear between the different phases in a multiphase medium and radiative cooling is present. The scaling of the hot gas entrainment rate in simulations and its surprising convergence properties are unintuitive. By drawing on parallels with turbulent combustion, we can better understand the structure and properties of such fronts. While global properties might not be sensitive to numerical resolution, observables such as temperature distributions, column densities and ion line ratios are. In other words, the answer to what scales need to be resolved depends on what quantities we care about. Understanding these mixing layers allows us to model larger scale systems of interest, for example accretion breaking of cold clouds.