Related papers: On the Disalignment of Interstellar Grains
We investigate the dynamics of dust grains with various sizes in protoplanetary disk winds driven by magnetorotational turbulence, by simulating the time evolution of the dust grain distribution in the vertical direction. Small dust grains,…
Dust emission mechanisms as one aspect of wind-driven particle motion on planetary surfaces are still poorly understood. The microphysics is important though as it determines dust sizes and morphologies which set sedimentation speeds and…
Grain growth by the accretion of metals in interstellar clouds (called `grain growth') could be one of the dominant processes that determine the dust content in galaxies. The importance of grain size distribution for the grain growth is…
The radiative torque (RAT) mechanism is the most promising way of explaining observed polarization arising from aligned grains. We explore the efficiency of the grain alignment by an anisotropic radiation flow for an extensive ensemble of…
Magnetic fields are thought to influence the formation and evolution of circumstellar envelopes around evolved stars. Thermal dust polarization from aligned grains is a promising tool for probing magnetic fields and dust properties in these…
Barnett relaxation, first described by Purcell in 1979, appears to play a major role in the alignment of grains with the interstellar magnetic field. In 1999, Lazarian and Draine proposed that Barnett relaxation and its relative, nuclear…
Debris disk images show clumps, rings, warps, and other structures, many of which have been interpreted as perturbations from hidden planets. But so far, no models of these structures have properly accounted for collisions between dust…
We investigate the rotational emission from dust grains that rotate around non- principal axes. We argue that in many phases of the interstellar medium, the smallest grains, which dominate spinning dust emission, are likely to have their…
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…
Young stars are formed within dusty discs. The grains in the disc are originally of the same size as interstellar dust. Models predict that these grains will grow in size through coagulation. Observations of the silicate features at micron…
We discuss a novel mechanism of dust acceleration which may dominate for particles smaller than $\sim0.1~\mu$m. The acceleration is caused by their direct electrostatic interactions arising from fluctuations of grain charges. The energy…
We investigate the claim that the ratio {\beta} of radiation pressure force to gravitational force on a dust grain in our solar system can substantially exceed unity for some grain sizes, provided that grain porosity is high enough. For…
We discuss a new technique of studying magnetic fields in diffuse astrophysical media, e.g. interstellar and intergalactic gas/plasma. This technique is based on the angular momentum alignment of atoms and ions in their ground or metastable…
We discuss the forces on grains exposed to anisotropic radiation fields, including the usual ``radiation pressure'' force and also recoil forces due to photoemitted electrons, photodesorbed hydrogen atoms, and hydrogen molecules which form…
Variations in polarization efficiency (p/A) of interstellar grains as a function of environment place vital constraints on models for the mechanism of their alignment. We use polarimetry of background field stars to investigate alignment in…
Granular systems present surprisingly complicated dynamics. In particular, nonlinear interactions and energy dissipation play important roles in these dynamics. Usually, constant coefficients of restitution are introduced phenomenologically…
How and when in the star formation sequence do dust grains start to grow into pebbles is a cornerstone question to both star and planet formation. We compute the polarized radiative transfer from a model solar-type protostellar core, using…
We investigate the role and behaviour of dust grains in C-type MHD shock waves in weakly ionized, dense molecular clouds. New shock models are presented for steady, oblique C-type shock structures with shock speed v_s=18km/s, n_H=10^5cm^-3,…
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…
We study the hydrodynamical behavior occurring in the turbulent interaction zone of a fast moving red supergiant star, where the circumstellar and interstellar material collide. In this wind-interstellar medium collision, the familiar bow…