Studies of Turbulence Dissipation in the Taurus Molecular Cloud with Core Velocity Dispersion

Turbulence dissipation is an important process affecting the energy balance in molecular clouds, the birth place of stars. Previously, the rate of turbulence dissipation is often estimated with semi-analytic formulae from simulation. Recently, we developed a data analysis technique called core velocity dispersion, which, for the first time, provides direct measurements of the turbulence dissipation rate in Taurus, a star-forming cloud. The thus measured dissipation rate of is similar to those from dimensional analysis, and is also consistent with the previous energy injection rate based on molecular outflows and bubbles.