Presentation 1 : Poster
Thermal Instability and structure formation in the interstellar medium
Sami Dib, Andreas Burkert
We use the HD version of the ZEUS3D code to in investigate the dynamical evolution of media which are subject to a thermal instability (hereafter TI). Our simulations are parametrized essentially in term of the cooling timescale normalized to the dynamical timescale eta= (t_cool/t_dyn). TI is found to be efficient only for a given range of the eta parameter, namely 0.4 < eta < 2. On the global scale of our simulation box (1 Kpc^3), no excess of kinetic energy is observed, when
compared to a non-cooling adiabatic model. However, whenever TI is relevant, kinetic energy excesses are observed on small lenghtscales. Further investigations of the phenomenon with higher resolution calculations and including self-gravity are in progress.