Related papers: Paramagnetic alignment of thermally rotating dust
Dust clouds are ubiquitous in the atmospheres of hot Jupiters and affect their observable properties. The alignment of dust grains in the clouds and resulting dust polarization is a promising method to study magnetic fields of exoplanets.…
Recent (sub)millimeter polarization observations of protoplanetary disks reveal toroidally aligned, effectively prolate dust grains large enough (at least ~100 $\mu$m) to efficiently scatter millimeter light. The alignment mechanism for…
Polarized microwave emission from dust is an important foreground that may contaminate polarized CMB studies unless carefully accounted for. Modeling of polarization from dust requires a quantitative understanding of grain alignment. I…
Aligned grains provide one of the easiest ways to study magnetic fields in diffuse gas and molecular clouds. How reliable our conclusions about the inferred magnetic field depends critically on our understanding of the physics of grain…
Thermal dust polarization is a powerful tool to probe magnetic fields ($\textbf{B}$) and grain properties. However, a systematic study of the dependence of dust polarization on grain properties in protostellar environments is not yet…
The motion of diamagnetic dust particles in interstellar magnetic fields is studied numerically with several different sets of parameters. Two types of behavior are observed, depending on the value of the critical number $R$, which is a…
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…
In the previous papers in this series, we found that radiative torques can play a major role in the alignment of grains with the interstellar magnetic field. Since the radiative torques can drive the grains to suprathermal rotational…
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…
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…
We study the physical processes that affect the alignment of grains subject to radiative torques (RATs). To describe the action of RATs, we use the analytical model (AMO) of RATs introduced in Paper I. We focus our discussion on the…
The degree to which interstellar grains align with respect to the interstellar magnetic field depends on disaligning as well as aligning mechanisms. For decades, it was assumed that disalignment was due primarily to the random angular…
The quantization of energy levels in very nanoparticles suppresses dissipative processes that convert grain rotational kinetic energy into heat. For grains small enough to have GHz rotation rates, the suppression of dissipation can be…
Most astrophysical systems, e.g. stellar winds, the diffuse interstellar medium, molecular clouds, are magnetized with magnetic fields that influence almost all of their properties. One of the most informative techniques of magnetic field…
Grain alignment theory has reached the stage where quantitative predictions of the degree of alignment and its variations with optical depth are possible. With the goal of studying the effect of clumpiness on the sub-millimeter and far…
We reveal a deep connection between alignment of dust grains by RAdiative torques (RATs) and MEchanical Torques (METs) and rotational disruption of grains introduced by Hoang et al. (2019). The disruption of grains happens if they have…
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…
We study the rotational and translational kinetics of massive particulates (dust grains) absorbing the ambient gas. Equations for microscopic phase densities are deduced resulting in the Fokker-Planck equation for the dust component. It is…
We generalize the magnetically enhanced radiative torque (MRAT) alignment theory for general astrophysical environments described by a dimensionless parameter $U/(n_{1}T_{2})$ with $U$ local radiation strength, $n_{1}=n_{\rm H}/(10{\rm…
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…