Related papers: Paramagnetic alignment of fractal grains
Paramagnetic alignment of suprathermally rotating grains is discussed in view of recent progress in understanding subtle processes taking place over grain surface. It is shown that in typical ISM conditions, grains with surfaces of…
It is shown, that mechanical alignment can be efficient for suprathermally rotating grains, provided that they drift with supersonic velocities. Such a drift should be widely spread due to both Alfv\'{e}nic waves and ambipolar diffusion.…
We discuss the dynamics of dust grains subjected to uncompensated torques arising from H_2 formation. In particular, we discuss grain dynamics when a grain spins down and goes through a ``crossover''. As first pointed out by Spitzer &…
It is shown that mechanical alignment of grains can be efficient for grains rotating suprathermally, i.e. with kinetic energy substantially exceeding $k$ (the Boltzmann constant) over any temperature in the system. The paper studies…
Paramagnetic alignment of thermally rotating oblate dust grains is studied analytically for finite ratios of grain to gas temperatures. For such ratios, the alignment of angular momentum J in respect to the grain axis of maximal inertia is…
Grain alignment theory suggests that grains should be aligned in circumstellar regions and the observational data available supports this conclusion. We discuss the alignment of grains via (1) magnetic relaxation, (2) mechanical processes,…
Since the classical work by Purcell (1979) it has been generally accepted that most interstellar grains rotate suprathermally. Suprathermally rotating grains would be nearly perfectly aligned with the magnetic field by paramagnetic…
This paper gives a short summary of a mechanism of the enhanced paramagnetic relaxation that acts on rapidly rotating interstellar grains. We show that the Barnett magnetization that arises from grain rotation ensures that paramagnetic…
Paramagnetic alignment of non-spherical dust grains rotating at thermal velocities is studied. The analytical solution is found for the alignment measure of oblate grains. Perturbative approach is used for solving the problem. It is shown…
This paper provides a quantitative account of a recently introduced mechanism of mechanical alignment of suprathermally rotating grains. These rapidly rotating grains are essentially not susceptible to random torques arising from gas-grain…
We show that the energy-level splitting arising from grain rotation ensures that paramagnetic dissipation acts at its maximum rate, i.e., the conditions for paramagnetic resonance are automatically fulfilled. We refer to this process as…
We consider grains with superparamagnetic inclusions and report two new condensed matter effects that can enhance the internal relaxation of the energy of a wobbling grain, namely, superparamagnetic Barnett relaxation, as well as, an…
We develop a comprehensive quantitative description of the cross-section mechanism discovered several years ago by Lazarian. This is one of the processes that determine grain orientation in clouds of suprathermal cosmic dust. The…
We show that grains can be efficiently aligned by interacting with a subsonic gaseous flow. The alignment arises from grains having irregularities that scatter atoms with different efficiency in the right and left directions. The grains…
Polarization arising from aligned dust grains presents a unique opportunity to study magnetic fields in the diffuse interstellar medium and molecular clouds. Polarization from circumstellar regions, accretion disks and comet atmospheres can…
Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the alignment of grains with the interstellar magnetic field, including paramagnetic dissipation, radiative torques, and supersonic gas-grain streaming. These must compete with disaligning…
While the problem of grain alignment was posed more than 60 years ago the quantitative model of grain alignment that can account for the observed polarization arising from aligned grains has been formulated only recently. The quantitative…
We present extensive calculations on the efficiency of grain alignment by the Davis-Greenstein mechanism. We model the grains as oblate spheroids with arbitrary axis ratios. Our description of the grain dynamics includes (i) magnetic…
For assemblies of superconductor nanograins, the magnetic response is analyzed as a function of both temperature and magnetic field. In order to describe the interaction energy of electron pairs for a huge number of many-particle states,…
Interstellar polarization in the optical/infrared has long been known to be due to asymmetrical dust grains aligned with the magnetic field and can potentially provide a resource effective way to probe both the topology and strength of the…