Related papers: Radiative torque alignment: Essential Physical Pro…
The linear polarization of thermal dust emission provides a powerful tool to probe interstellar and circumstellar magnetic fields, because aspherical grains tend to align themselves with magnetic field lines. While the Radiative Alignment…
Aims. It is quintessential for the analysis of the observed dust polarization signal to understand the rotational dynamics of interstellar dust grains. Additionally, high rotation velocities may rotationally disrupt the grains, which…
Dust clouds are ubiquitous in the atmospheres of hot Jupiters and affect their observable properties. The alignment of dust grains in the clouds and resulting dust polarization is a promising method to study magnetic fields of exoplanets.…
We study the internal and external alignment of carbonaceous grains, including graphite and hydrogenated amorphous carbon (HAC), in the interstellar medium (ISM) within the RAdiative Torque (RAT) paradigm. For internal alignment (IA), we…
Aligned grains provide one of the easiest ways to study magnetic fields in diffuse gas and molecular clouds. How reliable our conclusions about the inferred magnetic field depends critically on our understanding of the physics of grain…
We study the alignment of grains subject to both radiative torques and pinwheel torques while accounting for thermal flipping of grains. By pinwheel torques we refer to all systematic torques that are fixed in grain body axes, including the…
While the problem of grain alignment was posed more than 60 years ago the quantitative model of grain alignment that can account for the observed polarization arising from aligned grains has been formulated only recently. The quantitative…
Paramagnetic alignment of thermally rotating oblate dust grains is studied analytically for finite ratios of grain to gas temperatures. For such ratios, the alignment of angular momentum J in respect to the grain axis of maximal inertia is…
It is shown that mechanical alignment of grains can be efficient for grains rotating suprathermally, i.e. with kinetic energy substantially exceeding $k$ (the Boltzmann constant) over any temperature in the system. The paper studies…
Modern understanding of dust astrophysics reveals that RAdiative Torques (RATs) arising from the radiation-dust interaction can induce two fundamental effects, including grain alignment and rotational disruption. Here we review the recent…
The alignment of interstellar dust grains with magnetic fields provides a key method for measuring the strength and morphology of the fields. In turn, this provides a means to study the role of magnetic fields from diffuse gas to dense…
This paper provides a quantitative account of a recently introduced mechanism of mechanical alignment of suprathermally rotating grains. These rapidly rotating grains are essentially not susceptible to random torques arising from gas-grain…
We study the alignment and rotational disruption of dust grains at the centre of our Galaxy using polarized thermal dust emission observed by SOFIA/HAWC+ and JCMT/SCUPOL at 53, 216, and 850 $\mu$m. We analyzed the relationship between the…
Polarized emission from interstellar dust grains is commonly used to infer information about the underlying magnetic field from the diffuse interstellar medium to molecular cloud cores. Therefore, the ability to accurately determine…
Context. Planck observations demonstrated that the grain alignment efficiency is almost constant in the diffuse ISM. Aims. We test if the Radiative Torque (RAT) theory is compatible with observational constraints on grain alignment.…
Interstellar grain alignment studies are currently experiencing a renaissance due to the development of a new quantitative theory based on Radiative Alignment Torques (RAT). One of the distinguishing predictions of this theory is a…
Magnetic fields ($\textbf{B}$) are an important factor that controls the star formation process. The leading method to observe $\textbf{B}$ is using polarized thermal emission from dust grains aligned with $\textbf{B}$. However, in dense…
It is shown, that mechanical alignment can be efficient for suprathermally rotating grains, provided that they drift with supersonic velocities. Such a drift should be widely spread due to both Alfv\'{e}nic waves and ambipolar diffusion.…
Magnetic fields play a crucial role in various astrophysical processes, including star formation, accretion of matter, transport processes (e.g., transport of heat), and cosmic rays. One of the easiest ways to determine the magnetic field…
We discuss the dynamics of dust grains subjected to uncompensated torques arising from H_2 formation. In particular, we discuss grain dynamics when a grain spins down and goes through a ``crossover''. As first pointed out by Spitzer &…