Empirical constraints on the turbulence in QSO host nebulae

This video highlights the key results from a recent study by Chen et al. (2022) [1] that obtains empirical constraints on turbulence in quasar host nebulae by measuring velocity structure functions. We characterize the turbulent energy cascade on scales of ~5—50 kpc in four quasar nebulae at z=0.5—1.1. One of them shows spectacular agreement with the expectation from Kolmogorov turbulence! You can find the arXiv version of our paper here.

Additional observations of the quasar host nebula that follows the Kolmogorov scaling relations are presented in Johnson et al. (2022) [2]. A companion post in the Highlights section of the forum summarizes the key results of that paper.