Related papers: Overview of Grain Models
Our current understanding of the absorption and emission properties of interstellar grains are reviewed. The constraints placed by the Kramers-Kronig relation on the wavelength-dependence and the maximum allowable quantity of the dust…
This article gives an overview of the constitution, physical conditions and observables of dust in the interstellar medium of nearby galaxies. We first review the macroscopic, spatial distribution of dust in these objects, and its…
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…
Our current understanding of interstellar dust is summarized at an introductory level. Submicron-sized interstellar dust grains absorb and scatter light, and reradiate the absorbed energy in the infrared. The grain population spans a range…
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…
Our understanding of the nature of interstellar grains has evolved considerably over the past half century with the present author and Fred Hoyle being intimately involved at several key stages of progress. The currently fashionable…
Interstellar grains may be composite collections of particles of distinct materials, including voids, agglomerated together. We determine the various optical cross sections of such composite grains, given the optical properties of each…
A linear bubble model of grain growth is introduced to study the conditions under which an isolated grain can grow to a size much larger than the surrounding matrix average (abnormal growth). We first consider the case of bubbles of two…
Although interstellar grains are known to be aspherical, their actual shapes remain poorly constrained. We assess whether three continuous distributions of ellipsoidal shapes from the literature are suitable for describing the shapes 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…
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…
Granular materials are involved in most industrial and environmental processes, as well as many civil engineering applications. Although significant advances have been made in understanding the statics and dynamics of cohesionless grains…
Many technologically useful materials are polycrystals composed of a myriad of small monocrystalline grains separated by grain boundaries. Dynamics of grain boundaries play a crucial role in determining the grain structure and defining the…
The optical and magnetic properties of dust grains are reviewed, as they relate to the problem of interstellar grain alignment. Grain geometry plays an important role in determining the optical properties, and scattering and absorption of…
Grain growth is a ubiquitous and fundamental phenomenon observed in the cellular structures with the grain assembly separated by a network of grain boundaries, including metals and ceramics. However, the underlying mechanism of grain growth…
By radiation transfer models with a realistic power spectra of the projected density distributions, we show that the optical properties of grains are poorly constrained by observations of reflection nebulae. The ISM is known to be…
We briefly review some constraints (Owing to the limited number of pages of present review, only a sub-sample of the topics discussed during the talk are briefly summarized. For the interested readers we are pleased to send them upon…
Small amounts of pre-solar grains have survived in the matrices of primitive meteorites and interplanetary dust particles. Their detailed study in the laboratory with modern analytical tools provides highly accurate and detailed information…
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,…
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…