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A random, hydrogen-free, assembly of microscopic sp2 carbon chips, forming a macroscopically homogeneous and isotropic solid, is proposed as a model carrier for the UV interstellar extinction band . The validity of this model is based on…
The recent spectacular progress in the experimental and theoretical understanding of graphene, the basic constituent of graphite, is applied here to compute, from first principles, the UV extinction of nano-particles made of stacks of…
The diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) are ubiquitous absorption spectral features arising from the tenuous material in the space between stars -- the interstellar medium (ISM). Since their first detection nearly nine decades ago, over 400…
It is generally agreed that interstellar dust grains consist of two main components, namely, silicates and graphites. Some models, like MRN model, assume these grains to be homogeneous spheres following a power law size distribution. This…
The possible presence of graphene in the interstellar medium (ISM) is examined by comparing the interstellar extinction curve with the ultraviolet absorption of graphene calculated from its dielectric functions experimentally obtained with…
The possible detection of C_{24}, a planar graphene, recently reported in several planetary nebulae by Garciaa-Hernandez et al. (2011, 2012) inspires us to explore whether and how much graphene could exist in the interstellar medium (ISM)…
Graphene, a single sheet of graphite with honeycomb lattice structure, has massless carriers with tunable density and polarity. We investigate the ground state phase diagram of two graphene sheets (embedded in a dielectric) separated by…
Observations of interstellar extinction and polarization indicate that the interstellar medium consists of aligned non-spherical dust grains which show variation in the interstellar extinction curve for wavelengths ranging from NIR to UV.…
Modern data of the extinction curve from the ultraviolet to the near infrared are revisited to study the property of dust grains in the Milky Way (MW) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). We confirm that the graphite-silicate mixture of…
We study the extinction properties of the composite dust grains, consisting of host silicate spheroids and graphite as inclusions, using discrete dipole approximation (DDA). We calculate the extinction cross sections of the composite grains…
The properties of polycrystalline materials are often dominated by the size of their grains and by the atomic structure of their grain boundaries. These effects should be especially pronounced in 2D materials, where even a line defect can…
Although interstellar grains are known to be aspherical, their actual shapes remain poorly constrained. We assess whether three continuous distributions of ellipsoidal shapes from the literature are suitable for describing the shapes of…
The sizes of interstellar grains are widely distributed, ranging from a few angstroms to a few micrometers. The ultraviolet (UV) and optical extinction constrains the dust in the size range of a couple hundredth micrometers to several…
The carrier of the 2175 Angstrom interstellar extinction feature remains unidentified since its first detection over 40 years ago. In recent years carbon buckyonions have been proposed as a carrier of this feature, based on the close…
We introduce a model for amorphous grain boundaries in graphene, and find that stable structures can exist along the boundary that are responsible for local density of states enhancements both at zero and finite (~0.5 eV) energies. Such…
The plane wave scattering and absorption by finite and infinite gratings of free-space standing infinitely long graphene strips are studied in the THz range. A novel numerical approach, based on graphene surface impedance, hyper-singular…
A composite dust grain model which simultaneously explains the observed interstellar extinction, polarization, IR emission and the abundance constraints, is required. We present a composite grain model, which is made up of a host silicate…
In many models of dusty objects in space the grains are assumed to be composite or fluffy. However, the computation of the optical properties of such particles is still a very difficult problem. We analyze how the increase of grain porosity…
The most striking characteristics of the mysterious 2175 Angstrom extinction bump, the strongest spectroscopic absorption feature seen on the interstellar extinction curve, are the invariant central wavelength and variable bandwidth: its…
The composite grain is made up of a host silicate spheroid and graphite inclusions. The extinction efficiencies of the composite spheroidal grains for three axial ratios are computed using the discrete dipole approximation (DDA). The…