Ambipolar Drift in a Turbulent Medium

Abstract

The interstellar magnetic field strength and gas density are observed to be correlated, but there is a large dispersion in this relation. In particular, the magnetic field is often observed to be weaker than expected. It is usually assumed that the field is frozen into the gas, except at very low ionization fraction, in which case ion-neutral drift, or ambipolar diffusion, leads to appreciable slip of the field and tends to make it more uniform. We show that turbulence enhances the rate of ambipolar drift, and that this may explain the surprisingly low fieldstrengths sometimes seen in dense interstellar gas.