Related papers: Observational Constraints on the Physical Properti…
The Planck survey provides unprecedented full-sky coverage of the submillimetre polarized emission from Galactic dust, bringing new constraints on the properties of dust. The dust grains that emit the radiation seen by Planck in the…
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…
Dust in the diffuse interstellar medium remains incompletely understood with regard to the structure, composition, size distribution, and alignment properties of the grains. Joint observations of reddening, starlight polarisation spectra,…
Polarized extinction and emission from dust in the interstellar medium (ISM) are hard to interpret, as they have a complex dependence on dust optical properties, grain alignment and magnetic field orientation. This is particularly true in…
We present a model for the diffuse interstellar dust that explains the observed wavelength-dependence of extinction, emission, linear and circular polarisation of light. The model is set-up with a small number of parameters. It consists of…
Several of the current and next-generation cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments have polarimetric capability, promising to add to the finesse of precision cosmology. One of the contaminating Galactic foregrounds is thermal emission…
Galactic dust emission is polarized at unexpectedly high levels, as revealed by Planck. The origin of the observed $\simeq 20\%$ polarization fractions can be identified by characterizing the properties of optical starlight polarization in…
Interstellar polarization at far-infrared through millimeter wavelengths (0.1 - 1 mm) is primarily due to thermal emission from dust grains aligned with magnetic fields. This mechanism has led to studies of magnetic fields in a variety of…
The wavelength dependences of interstellar extinction and polarization, supplemented by observed elemental abundances and the spectrum of infrared emission from dust heated by starlight, strongly constrain dust models. One dust model that…
This review surveys the observed properties of interstellar dust grains: the wavelength-dependent extinction of starlight, including absorption features, from UV to IR; optical luminescence; IR emission; microwave emission; optical, UV, and…
Continuum polarization over the UV-to-microwave range is due to dichroic extinction (or emission) by asymmetric, aligned dust grains. Because of both grain alignment and scattering physics, the wavelength dependence of the polarization,…
The review contains an analysis of the observed and model curves of the interstellar extinction and polarization. The observations mainly give information on dust in diffuse and translucent interstellar clouds. The features of various dust…
Polarization of interstellar dust emission is a powerful probe of dust properties and magnetic field structure. Yet studies of external galaxies are hampered by foreground dust contribution. The aim of this study is to separate the…
We present polarisation spectra of seven stars in the lines-of-sight towards the Sco OB1 association. Our spectra were obtained within the framework of the Large Interstellar Polarization Survey carried out with the FORS instrument of the…
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…
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…
Distance estimates derived from spectroscopy or parallax have been unified by considering extinction by large grains. The addition of such a population of what is called Dark Dust to models of the diffuse interstellar medium is tested…
Planck has mapped the intensity and polarization of the sky at microwave frequencies with unprecedented sensitivity. We make use of the Planck 353 GHz I, Q, and U Stokes maps as dust templates, and cross-correlate them with the Planck and…
Polarized far-infrared and submillimeter emission is calculated for models of nonspherical dust grains that are constrained to reproduce the observed wavelength-dependent extinction and polarization of starlight. For emission from regions…
Interstellar polarization from aligned dust grains can be measured both in transmission at visible and near-infrared wavelengths and in emission at far-infrared and sub-mm wavelengths. These observations can help predict the behavior of…