Letter to the Editor

Are supernovae driving turbulence in the solar neighborhood?

¹ Université Paris-Saclay, Université Paris Cité, CEA, CNRS, AIM, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
² University of Vienna, Department of Astrophysics, Türkenschanzstraße 17, 1180 Wien, Austria
³ ENS de Lyon, CRAL UMR5574, Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, Lyon 69007, France
⁴ Universität Heidelberg, Zentrum für Astronomie, Institut für Theoretische Astrophysik, Albert-Ueberle-Str. 2, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
⁵ Universität Heidelberg, Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Wissenschaftliches Rechnen, Im Neuenheimer Feld 225, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
⁶ Laboratoire de Physique de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, ENS, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité, Observatoire de Paris, Paris, France
⁷ INAF – Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Via Fosso del Cavaliere 100 I-00133, Roma, Italy
⁸ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma Tor Vergata, Via della Ricerca Scientifica 1, 00133 Roma, Italy
⁹ Institute of Physics, Laboratory for Galaxy Evolution and Spectral Modelling, EPFL, Observatoire de Sauverny, Chemin Pegasi 51, 1290 Versoix, Switzerland

^★ Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received: 21 January 2026
Accepted: 12 March 2026

Abstract

Context. Turbulence plays an important role in shaping the interstellar medium, and it strongly influences star formation.

Aims. We aim to identify the physical processes capable of sustaining H I turbulence in the solar neighborhood.

Methods. We compare recent H I line-of-sight velocity observations within a volume of radius 70–500 pc centered on the Sun with a suite of 1 kpc numerical simulations that include two distinct turbulent drivers: (i) supernova (SN) feedback and (ii) imposed large-scale turbulent forcing. For each simulation, we constructed synthetic sky maps that closely mimic the observational one, allowing for a consistent comparison between the simulations and the observational data.

Results. The H I observations show a median velocity dispersion of 11.1 km s⁻¹ in the solar neighborhood. The SN-driven simulations systematically underpredict this value, yielding dispersions in the range 4.9–6.7 km s⁻¹. We find that the simulations with strong enough large-scale forcing can reproduce not only the median observed velocity dispersion but also the observed velocity distribution.