2009ApJ...707L.153P

Is the turbulence in cluster-forming regions internally driven by stellar outflows or the consequence of a large-scale turbulent cascade? We address this question by studying the turbulent energy spectrum in NGC 1333. Using synthetic ¹³CO maps computed with a snapshot of a supersonic turbulence simulation, we show that the velocity coordinate spectrum method of Lazarian & Pogosyan provides an accurate estimate of the turbulent energy spectrum. We then apply this method to the ¹³CO map of NGC 1333 from the COMPLETE database. We find that the turbulent energy spectrum is a power law, E(k) ∝ k ^–β, in the range of scales 0.06 pc ≤ℓ ≤ 1.5 pc, with slope β = 1.85±0.04. The estimated energy injection scale of stellar outflows in NGC 1333 is ℓ_inj~ 0.3 pc, well resolved by the observations. There is no evidence of the flattening of the energy spectrum above the scale ℓ_inj predicted by outflow-driven simulations and analytical models. The power spectrum of integrated intensity is also a nearly perfect power law in the range of scales 0.16 pc <ℓ< 7.9 pc, with no feature above ℓ_inj. We conclude that the observed turbulence in NGC 1333 does not appear to be driven primarily by stellar outflows.