UC San Diego

This dissertation describes my work developing and using SFgen: a fast, MPI-parallel method for measuring two-point statistics in simulation data produced by the AMR code Enzo. My research using SFgen focused on measuring several scaling relations in large-scale simulations modeling the supersonic isothermal turbulence observed in molecular clouds. This work contributed to research on three-dimensional compressible turbulence, mainly whether the exchange of energy between scales is local in Fourier space on average, similar to incompressible turbulence. A reliable model for energy flux between scales in supersonic turbulence is essential to understanding molecular clouds' lifecycles and predicting the magnitude and scale of their driving sources. Furthermore, since molecular clouds are the birthplaces of stars, the energy cascade has further implications for several factors of star formation. The results of my research support a local energy cascade in supersonic turbulence and have been reproduced by others.