arXiv subjects

A. Lazarian

Publications and source records attributed to A. Lazarian.

At least 307 records · Page 17Linked to original sources

arXiv2000

Statistics of Turbulence from Spectral-Line Data Cubes

Emission in spectral lines can provide unique information on interstellar turbulence. Doppler shifts due to supersonic motions contain information on turbulent velocity field which is otherwise difficult to measure. However, the problem of separation of velocity and density fluctuations is far from being trivial. Using atomic hydrogen (HI) as a test case, I review techniques applicable to emission line studies with the emphasis on those that can provide information on the underlying power spectra of velocity and density. I show that recently developed mathematical machinery is promising for the purpose. Its application to HI shows that in cold neutral hydrogen the velocity fluctuations dominate the small scale structures observed in spectral-line data cubes and this result is very important for the interpretation of observational data, including the identification of clouds. Velocity fluctuations are shown to dominate the formation of small scale structures that can be erroneously identified as diffuse clouds. One may argue that the HI data is consistent with the Goldreich-Shridhar picture of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, but the cascade from the scales of several kpc that this interpretation involves does not fit well in the current paradigm of energy injection. The issue whether magnetic field does make the turbulence anisotropic is still open, but if this is the case, I show that studies of emission lines can provide a reliable way of determining magnetic field direction. I discuss various techniques for studying interstellar turbulence using emission lines, e.g. spectral correlation functions, genus statistics and principal component analysis.

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arXiv1999

Nuclear Spin Relaxation within Interstellar Grains

We identify a new mechanism of internal dissipation of rotational kinetic energy in spinning dust grains, arising from the reorientation of nuclear angular momentum, e.g., spins of protons. Grain rotation induces magnetization of the nuclear spin system, with net alignment of nuclear spins parallel to the grain angular velocity. When the grain does not rotate around a principal axis, the nuclear magnetization vector precesses in grain body coordinates, resulting in dissipation of energy. The analogous process involving electron spins was discovered by Purcell and termed ``Barnett relaxation''. We revisit the physics of the ``Barnett relaxation'' process and correct the estimate for the Barnett relaxation rate. We show that nuclear relaxation can be orders of magnitude more important than Barnett relaxation. This finding implies that the processes of ``thermal flipping'' and ``thermal trapping'' are important for a broad range of grain sizes.

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arXiv1999

Microwave Emission from Galactic Dust Grains

Observations of the cosmic microwave background have revealed a component of 10-60 GHz emission from the Galaxy which correlates with 100-140um emission from interstellar dust but has an intensity much greater than expected for the low-frequency tail of the "electric dipole vibrational" emission peaking at \~130um. This "anomalous emission" is more than can be accounted for by dust-correlated free-free emission. The anomalous emission could be due in part to magnetic dipole emission from thermal fluctuations of the magnetization within interstellar dust grains, but only if a substantial fraction of the Fe in interstellar dust resides in magnetic materials such as metallic iron or magnetite. The observed anomalous emission is probably due primarily to electric dipole radiation from spinning ultrasmall interstellar dust grains. This rotational emission is expected to be partially polarized. From the standpoint of minimizing confusion with non-CBR foregrounds, 60-120 GHz appears to be the optimal frequency window.

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arXiv1999

Polarized Foreground from Thermal Dust Emission

In this review, we intend to present the current knowledge of the polarized emission from thermal dust in our Galaxy. We show different methods to estimate the spatial distribution statistics of this emission in the lack of any data from the diffuse ISM, and compare it to the expected CMB polarized signal. We finally show how this contaminant could be efficiently removed from CMB maps using multi-frequency observations.

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arXiv1999

Reconnection in a Weakly Stochastic Field

We examine the effect of weak, small scale magnetic field structure on the rate of reconnection in a strongly magnetized plasma. This affects the rate of reconnection by reducing the transverse scale for reconnection flows, and by allowing many independent flux reconnection events to occur simultaneously. Allowing only for the first effect and using Goldreich and Sridhar's model of strong turbulence in a magnetized plasma with negligible intermittency, we find that the lower limit for the reconnection speed is the Alfven speed times the Lundquist number to the power (-3/16). The upper limit on the reconnection speed is typically a large fraction of Alfven speed. We argue that generic reconnection in turbulent plasmas will normally occur at close to this upper limit. The fraction of magnetic energy that goes directly into electron heating scales as Lundquist number to the power (-2/5) and the thickness of the current sheet scales as the Lundquist number to the power (-3/5). A significant fraction of the magnetic energy goes into high frequency Alfven waves. We claim that the qualitative sense of these conclusions, that reconnection is fast even though current sheets are narrow, is almost independent of the local physics of reconnection and the nature of the turbulent cascade. As the consequence of this the Galactic and Solar dynamos are generically fast, i.e. do not depend on the plasma resistivity.

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arXiv1999

Thermal Flipping and Thermal Trapping -- New Elements in Dust Grain Dynamics

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 dissipation if not for ``crossovers'', intervals of low angular velocity resulting from reversals of the torques responsible for suprathermal rotation; during crossovers grains are susceptible to disalignment by random impulses. Lazarian and Draine (1997) identified thermal fluctuations within grain material as an important component of crossover dynamics. For grains of size less than 0.1 micron, these fluctuations ensure good correlation of angular momentum before and after crossover resulting in good alignment, in accord with observations of starlight polarization. In the present paper we discuss two new processes which are important for the dynamics of grains with a<0.1 micron. The first -- ``thermal flipping'' -- offers a way for small grains to bypass the period of greatly reduced angular momentum which would otherwise take place during a crossover, thereby enhancing the alignment of small grains. The second effect -- ``thermal trapping'' -- arises when thermal flipping becomes rapid enough to prevent the systematic torques from driving the grain to suprathermal rotation. This effect acts to reduce the alignment of small grains. The observed variation of grain alignment with grain size would then result from a combination of the thermal flipping process -- which suppresses suprathermal rotation of small grains -- and due to molecular hydrogen formation and starlight -- which drive large grains to suprathermal rotation rates.

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arXiv1998

Davis-Greenstein alignment of oblate spheroidal grains

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 dissipation and the inverse process driven by thermal fluctuations in the grain magnetization; (ii) gas-grain collisions and thermal evaporation of molecules from the grain surface; (iii) the transformation of rotational energy into heat by the Barnett effect and the inverse process driven by thermal fluctuations; and (iv) rapid Larmor precession of the grain angular momentum about the interstellar magnetic field. For ordinary paramagnetic grains, we calculate the Rayleigh reduction factor, R, for more than 1000 combinations of the 3 dimensionless parameters which characterise the alignment. For superparamagnetic grains, we calculate R from an exact analytic solution for the relevant distribution function. We calibrate the accuracy of a recently-proposed perturbative approximation and show that it yields R values with a mean error of about 17 percent.

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arXiv1998

Inelastic Dissipation in a Freely Rotating Body. Application to Cosmic-Dust Alignment

Motivated by a recent study by Lazarian and Draine, which showed that a high degree of grain alignment of the paramagnetic dust is achievable if the rates of internal relaxation are controlled by the Barnett relaxation process, we undertake a study of an alternative mechanism of internal dissipation, namely, the inelastic dissipation of energy in oblate dust grains. We find that deformations at double frequency that were disregarded in earlier studies dominate the inelastic relaxation. Our results indicate that for grains with 4:1 axis ratio, or/and grains formed via agglomeration inelastic relaxation dominates the Barnett relaxation within large (a>0.1 micron) grains even when they rotate at thermal rate. For grains with axis ratio less than 1:2 the inelastic relaxation is dominant when grains rotate suprathermally.

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arXiv1998

Turbulent Cooling Flows in Molecular Clouds

We propose that inward, subsonic flows arise from the local dissipation of turbulent motions in molecular clouds. Such "turbulent cooling flows" may account for recent observations of spatially extended inward motions towards dense cores. These pressure-driven flows may arise from various types of turbulence and dissipation mechanisms. For the example of MHD waves and turbulence damped by ion-neutral friction, sustained cooling flow requires that the outer gas be sufficiently turbulent, that the inner gas have marginal field-neutral coupling, and that this coupling decrease sufficiently rapidly with increasing density. These conditions are most likely met at the transition between outer regions ionized primarily by UV photons and inner regions ionized primarily by cosmic rays. If so, turbulent cooling flows can help form dense cores, with speeds faster than expected for ambipolar diffusion. Such motions could reduce the time needed for dense core formation and could precede and enhance the motions of star-forming gravitational infall.

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arXiv1998

Magnetic Dipole Microwave Emission from Dust Grains

Thermal fluctuations in the magnetization of interstellar grains will produce magnetic dipole emission at frequencies below ~100 GHz. We show how to calculate absorption and emission from small particles composed of magnetic materials. The Kramers-Kronig relations for a dusty medium are generalized to include the possibility of magnetic grains. The frequency-dependent magnetic permeability is discussed for candidate grain materials, including iron and magnetite. We calculate emission spectra for various interstellar grain candidates. While paramagnetic grains or magnetite grains cannot account for the observed "anomalous" emission from dust in the 14-90 GHz range, stronger magnetic dipole emission will result if a fraction of the grain material is ferromagnetic, as could be the case given the high Fe content of interstellar dust. The observed emission from dust near 90 GHz implies that not more than 5% of interstellar Fe is in the form of metallic iron grains or inclusions (e.g., in "GEMS"). However, we show that if most interstellar Fe is in a moderately ferromagnetic material, it could contribute a substantial fraction of the observed 14-90 GHz emission, perhaps comparable to the contribution from spinning ultrasmall dust grains. The two emission mechanisms can be distinguished by measuring the emission from dark clouds. The expected polarization of magnetic dipole emission is discussed

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arXiv1998

Reconnection via the Tearing Instability

We discuss the role of tearing instabilities in magnetic reconnection. In three dimensions this instability leads to the formation of strong Alfvenic waves that remove plasma efficiently from the reconnection layer. As a result the instability proceeds at high rates while staying close to the linear regime. Our calculations show that for a resistive fluid the reconnection speed scales as the product of the Alfven speed V_A over the magnetic Reynolds number to the power -0.3. In the limit of vanishing resistivity, tearing modes proceed at a non-zero rate, driven by the electron inertia term, giving rise to a reconnection speed V_A (c/ω_p L_x)^{3/5}, where ω_p is the plasma frequency and L_x is the transverse scale of the reconnection layer. Formally this solves the problem of fast reconnection, but in practice this reconnection speed is small.

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arXiv1998

Turbulence in Atomic Hydrogen

Understanding the properties of interstellar turbulence is a great intellectual challenge and the urge to solve this problem is partially motivated by a necessity to explain the star formation mystery. This review deals with a recently suggested inversion technique as applied to atomic hydrogen. This technique allows to determine 3D turbulence statistics through the variations of 21 cm intensity. We claim that a radio interferometer is an ideal tool for such a study as its visibility function is directly related to the statistics of galactic HI. Next, we show how galactic rotation curve can be used to study the turbulence slice by slice and relate the statistics given in galactic coordinates and in the velocity space. The application of the technique to HI data reveals a shallow spectrum of the underlying HI density that is not compatible with a naive Kolmogorov picture. We show that the random density corresponding to the found spectrum tends to form low contrast filaments that are elongated towards the observer.

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arXiv1998

Electric Dipole Radiation from Spinning Dust Grains

We discuss the rotational excitation of small interstellar grains and the resulting electric dipole radiation from spinning dust. Attention is given to excitation and damping of rotation by: collisions with neutrals; collisions with ions; plasma drag; emission of infrared radiation; emission of microwave radiation; photoelectric emission; and formation of H_2 on the grain surface. We introduce dimensionless functions F and G which allow direct comparison of the contributions of different mechanisms to rotational drag and excitation. Emissivities are estimated for dust in different phases of the interstellar medium, including diffuse HI, warm HI, low-density photoionized gas, and cold molecular gas. Spinning dust grains can explain much, and perhaps all, of the 14-50 GHz background component recently observed in CBR studies. It should be possible to detect rotational emission from small grains by ground-based observations of molecular clouds.

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arXiv1997

Diffuse Galactic Emission from Spinning Dust Grains

Spinning interstellar dust grains produce detectable rotational emission in the 10-100 GHz frequency range. We calculate the emission spectrum, and show that this emission can account for the ``anomalous'' Galactic background component which correlates with 100um thermal emission from dust. Implications for cosmic background studies are discussed.

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arXiv1997

Reconnection in the ISM

We discuss the role of ambipolar diffusion for simple reconnection in a partially ionized gas, following the reconnection geometry of Parker and Sweet. When the recombination time is short the mobility and reconnection of the magnetic field is substantially enhanced as matter escapes from the reconnection region via ambipolar diffusion. Our analysis shows that in the interstellar medium it is the recombination rate that usually limits the rate of reconnection. We show that heating effects can reduce this rate by increasing the recombination time and raising the local ion pressure. In the colder parts of the ISM, when temperatures are or the order of 100K or less, we obtain a significant enhancement over the usual Sweet-Parker rate, but only in dense molecular clouds will the reconnection velocity exceed 0.001 times the Alfvén speed. The ratio of the ion orbital radius to the reconnection layer thickness is typically a few percent, except in dense molecular clouds where it can approach unity. We briefly discuss prospects for obtaining much faster reconnection speeds in astrophysical plasmas.

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arXiv1997

On the efficiency of grain alignment in dark clouds

A quantitative analysis of grain alignment in the filamentary dark cloud L1755 in Ophiuchus is presented. We show, that the observed decrease of the polarization to extinction ratio for the inner parts of this quiescent dark cloud can be explained as a result of the decrease of the efficiency of grain alignment.We make quantitative estimates of grain alignment efficiency for six mechanisms, involving grains with either thermal or suprathermal rotation, interacting with either magnetic field or gaseous flow. We also make semiquantitative estimates of grain alignment by radiative torques.We show that in conditions typical of dark cloud interiors, all known major mechanisms of grain alignment fail. All the studied mechanisms predict polarization at least an order of magnitude below the currently detectable levels of order of 1%. On the contrary, in the dark cloud environments where A_v<1 the grain alignment can be much more efficient. There the alignment of suprathermally rotating grains with superparamagentic inclusions, and possibly also radiative torques account for observed polarization. These results apply to L1755, which we model in detail and probably also to B216 and other similar dark clouds. Our study suggests an explanation for the difference in results obtained through polarimetry of background starlight and polarized thermal emission from the dust itself. We conjecture that the emission polarimetry selectively reveals aligned grains in the environment far from thermodynamic equilibrium as opposed to starlight polarization studie that probe the alignment of grains all the way along the line of sight, including the interiors of dark quiescent clouds, where no alignment is possible.

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arXiv1997

Cosmic rays and grain alignment

The recent detection of interstellar polarization in the solid CO feature near 4.67 micron shows that CO-mantled grains can be aligned in cold molecular clouds. These observations conflict with a theory of grain alignment which attributes the polarization in molecular clouds to the effects of cosmic rays: according to this theory, oblate spheroidal grains with H_2O and CO_2-dominated ice mantles are spun up to suprathermal energies by molecular evaporation from cosmic ray impact sites but spin up does not occur for CO-mantled grains. Motivated by this conflict, we reexamine the effects of cosmic rays on the alignment of icy grains. We show that the systematic torques produced by cosmic rays are insufficient to cause suprathermal spin. In principle, the random torques due to cosmic rays can enhance the efficiency of Davis-Greenstein alignment by raising the grain rotational temperature. However, a significant enhancement would require cosmic ray fluxes 6--7 orders of magnitude larger than the flux in a typical cold cloud.

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arXiv1997

Gold alignment & internal dissipation

The measures of mechanical alignment were obtained for both prolate and oblate grains when their temperature is comparable with grain kinetic energy devided by k, the Boltzmann constant. For such grains, the alignment of angular momentum, J, with the axis of maximal inertia, a, is only partial. This substantially alters the alignment as compared with the results in Lazarian (1995) and Roberge, Hanany & Messinger (1996) obtained on the assumption of perfect alignment. We also describe the Gold alignment when the Barnett dissipation is suppressed and derive an analytical expression which relates the measure of alignment with parameters of grain nonsphericity and the direction of the gas - grain drift. This solution provides the lower limit for the alignment measure, while the upper limit is given by the analytics derived in Lazarian (1994). Using results of a recent study of incomplete internal relaxation in Lazarian & Roberge (1996), we find measures of alignment for the whole range of ratios of grain rotational energy to k over T_s, where T_s is the grain temperature. To describe alignment for mildly supersonic drifts, we suggest an analytical approach which provides good correspondence with the results of direct numerical simulations in Roberge, Hanany & Messinger (1995). We also extend our approach to account for the simultaneous action of the Gold and Davis-Greenstein mechanisms.

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