The radiative torque spin-up efficiency of ballistic dust grain aggregates

Abstract

Aims. It is quintessential for the analysis of the observed dust polarization signal to understand the rotational dynamics of interstellar dust grains. Additionally, high rotation velocities may rotationally disrupt the grains, which impacts the grain-size distribution. We aim to constrain the set of parameters for an accurate description of the rotational spin-up process of ballistic dust grain aggregates driven by radiative torques (RATs). Methods. We modeled the dust grains as complex fractal aggregates grown by the ballistic aggregation of uniform spherical particles (monomers) of different sizes. A broad variation of dust materials, shapes, and sizes were studied in the presence of different radiation sources. Results. We find that the canonical parameterization for the torque efficiency overestimates the maximum angular velocity $\omega_{\mathrm{RAT}}$ caused by RATs acting on ballistic grain aggregates. To resolve this problem, we propose a new parameterization that predicts $\omega_{\mathrm{RAT}}$ more accurately. We find that RATs are most efficient for larger grains with a lower monomer density. Following the constant part, the parameterization has two power laws with different slopes that retain universality for all grain sizes. The maximum grain rotation does not scale linearly with radiation strength because different drag mechanisms dominate, depending on the grain material and environment. The angular velocity $\omega_{\mathrm{RAT}}$ of individual single dust grains has a wide distribution and may even differ from the mean by up to two orders of magnitude. Even though ballistic aggregates have a lower RAT efficiency, strong sources of radiation (stronger than $\approx 100$ times the typical interstellar radiation field) may still produce rotation velocities high enough to cause the rotational disruption of dust grains.