Related papers: Grain Nucleation Experiments and Other Laboratory …
Stars form out of molecular gas and supply dust grains during their last evolutionary stages; in turn hydrogen molecules (H2) are produced more efficiently on dust grains. Therefore, dust can drastically accelerate H2 formation, leading to…
The coagulation of cosmic dust grains is a fundamental process which takes place in astrophysical environments, such as presolar nebulae and circumstellar and protoplanetary disks. Cosmic dust grains can become charged through interaction…
Dust clouds influence the atmospheric structure of brown dwarfs, and they affect the heat transfer and change the gas-phase chemistry. However, the physics of their formation and evolution is not well understood. In this letter, we predict…
We aim at understanding the formation of cloud layers in quasi-static substellar atmospheres. The time-dependent description presented in (Helling & Woitke 2006) is a kinetic model describing nucleation, growth and evaporation. It is…
Dust grains coagulate into larger aggregates in dense gas. This changes their size distribution and possibly affects the thermal evolution of star-forming clouds. We here investigate dust coagulation in collapsing pre-stellar cores with…
There are strong observational indications that the dense slow winds of cool luminous AGB stars are driven by radiative pressure on dust grains which form in the extended atmospheres resulting from pulsation-induced shocks. For carbon…
Interstellar dust grains efficiently absorb and scatter UV and optical radiation in galaxies, and therefore can significantly affect the apparent structure of spiral galaxies. We discuss the effect of dust attenuation on the observed…
In a cosmological context dust has been always poorly understood. That is true also for the statistic of GRBs so that we started a program to understand its role both in relation to GRBs and in function of z. This paper presents a composite…
Context: Red super-giant (RSG) stars exhibit significant mass loss through a slow and dense wind. They are often considered to be the more massive counter parts of Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars. While the AGB mass loss is linked to…
Context. Water together with O2 are important gas phase ingredients to cool dense gas in order to form stars. On dust grains, H2 O is an important constituent of the icy mantle in which a complex chemistry is taking place, as revealed by…
Brown dwarfs and giant gas planets are substellar objects whose spectral appearance is determined by the chemical composition of the gas and the solids/liquids in the atmosphere. Atmospheres of substellar objects possess two major scale…
We present new models for the evolution of stars with mass in the range 1Msun < M < 7.5Msun, followed from the pre-main-sequence through the asymptotic giant branch phase. The metallicity adopted is $Z=3*10^{-4} (which, with an…
The past decade has led to significant improvements in our understanding of the physical structure of the molecular cores of cold dark clouds. Observational efforts, in combination with improved knowledge of cloud structure, now provide…
Dust grains play a major role in many astrophysical contexts. They affect the chemical, magnetic, dynamical, and optical properties of their environment, from galaxies down to the interstellar medium, star-forming regions, and…
The material lost through stellar winds of Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars is one of the main contributors to the chemical enrichment of galaxies. The general hypothesis of the mass loss mechanism of AGB winds is a combination of…
The path to understanding star formation processes begins with the study of the formation of molecular clouds. The outskirts of these clouds are characterized by low column densities that allow the penetration of ultraviolet radiation,…
The efficiency of dust formation in oxygen-rich AGB stars should (in theory) be metallicity dependent since they are not producing their own raw material for dust production. Metal-poor carbon stars may not be very efficient dust producers…
[Abridged] In this paper we explore grain size effects on wind properties of carbon stars, using a generalized description of radiative cross sections valid for particles of arbitrary sizes. The purpose of the study is to investigate under…
In the interstellar medium of the Milky Way, certain elements -- e.g., Mg, Si, Al, Ca, Ti, Fe -- reside predominantly in interstellar dust grains. These grains absorb, scatter, and emit electromagnetic radiation, heat the interstellar…
Condensation of circumstellar dust begins with formation of molecular clusters close to the stellar photosphere. These clusters are predicted to act as condensation cores at lower temperatures and allow efficient dust formation farther away…