Related papers: Interstellar extinction and interstellar polarizat…
We present a study of the polarizing power of the dust in cold dense regions (dark clouds) compared to that of dust in the general interstellar medium (ISM). Our study uses new polarimetric, optical, and spectral classification data for 36…
Scattering and absorption of X-rays by interstellar dust is calculated for a model consisting of carbonaceous grains and amorphous silicate grains. The calculations employ realistic dielectric functions with structure near X-ray absorption…
We compare the performance of several dust models in reproducing the dust spectral energy distribution (SED) per unit extinction in the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM). We use our results to constrain the variability of the optical…
We analyze extragalactic extinction profiles derived through gamma-ray burst afterglows, using a dust model specifically constructed on the assumption that dust grains are not immutable but respond time-dependently to the local physics.…
Polarization carries information about the magnetic fields in interstellar clouds. The observations of polarized dust emission are used to study the role of magnetic fields in the evolution of molecular clouds and the initial phases of…
There is a long-standing discussion in the astrophysical/astrochemical community as to the structure and morphology of dust grains in various astrophysical environments (e.g., interstellar clouds, protostellar envelopes, protoplanetary and…
We present a statistical analysis of the interstellar medium (ISM) polarization from the largest compilation available of starlight data, which comprises ~ 5500 stars. The measured correlation between the mean polarization degree and…
Radiative transfer models were developed to understand the optical polarizations in edge-on galaxies, which are observed to occur even outside the geometrically thin dust disk, with a scale height of ~ 0.2 kpc. In order to reproduce the…
The extinction curve of interstellar dust in the dense molecular cloud cores is crucial for understanding dust properties, particularly size distribution and composition. We investigate the infrared extinction law in four nearby isolated…
Aligned interstellar grains produce polarized extinction (observed at wavelengths from the far-ultraviolet to the mid-infrared), and polarized thermal emission (observed at far-infrared and submm wavelengths). The grains must be quite…
It is well known that the dust properties of the diffuse interstellar medium exhibit variations towards different sight-lines on a large scale. We have investigated the variability of the dust characteristics on a small scale, and from…
The properties of interstellar grains can now be defined by a rapidly growing wealth of observational data. We rely upon models to combine these data with unobserved properties such as the size distribution of grains, their structure and…
In spite of accounting for only a small fraction of the mass of the Interstellar Medium (ISM), dust plays a primary role in many physical and chemical processes in the Universe. It is the main driver of extinction of radiation in the…
Polarized dust emission outside of disks reveal the magnetic field morphology of molecular clouds. Within disks, however, polarized dust emission can arise from very different mechanisms (e.g., self-scattering), and each of them are useful…
Observations of far-infrared (FIR) and submillimeter (SMM) polarized emission are used to study magnetic fields and dust grains in dense regions of the interstellar medium (ISM). These observations place constraints on models of molecular…
Dust particles in space may appear as clusters of individual grains. The morphology of these clusters could be of a fractal or more compact nature. To investigate how the cluster morphology influences the calculated extinction of different…
We present a model of the interaction of interstellar dust grains with a stellar environment, that predicts the distribution of interstellar dust grains in the size range between $0.1 {\rm \mu m}$ and $1 {\rm \mu m}$ around a star for the…
We present a new version of our analytical model of the spatial interstellar extinction variations within the nearest kiloparsec. This model treats the 3D dust distribution as a superposition of three overlapping layers: (1) the layer along…
Interstellar dust appears in a number of roles in the interstellar medium. Historically, the most familiar one is as a source of extinction in the optical. Absorbed optical and ultraviolet light heats the dust, whence infrared (including…
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…