arXiv subjects

B. T. Draine

Publications and source records attributed to B. T. Draine.

At least 145 records · Page 8Linked to original sources

arXiv2001

Electron-Ion Recombination on Grains and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

With the high-resolution spectroscopy now available in the optical and satellite UV, it is possible to determine the neutral/ionized column density ratios for several different elements in a single cloud. Assuming ionization equilibrium for each element, one can make several independent determinations of the electron density. For the clouds for which such an analysis has been carried out, these different estimates disagree by large factors, suggesting that some process (or processes) besides photoionization and radiative recombination might play an important role in the ionization balance. One candidate process is collisions of ions with dust grains. Making use of recent work quantifying the abundances of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules and other grains in the interstellar medium, as well as recent models for grain charging, we estimate the grain-assisted ion recombination rates for several astrophysically important elements. We find that these rates are comparable to the rates for radiative recombination for conditions typical of the cold neutral medium. Including grain-assisted ion recombination in the ionization equilibrium analysis leads to increased consistency in the various electron density estimates for the gas along the line of sight to 23 Orionis. However, not all of the discrepancies can be eliminated in this way; we speculate on some other processes that might play a role. We also note that grain-assisted recombination of H+ and He+ leads to significantly lower electron fractions than usually assumed for the cold neutral medium.

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arXiv2001

Dust Grain Size Distributions and Extinction in the Milky Way, LMC, and SMC

We construct size distributions for carbonaceous and silicate grain populations in different regions of the Milky Way, LMC, and SMC. The size distributions include sufficient very small carbonaceous grains (including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules) to account for the observed infrared and microwave emission from the diffuse interstellar medium. Our distributions reproduce the observed extinction of starlight, which varies depending upon the interstellar environment through which the light travels. As shown by Cardelli, Clayton & Mathis in 1989, these variations can be roughly parameterized by the ratio of visual extinction to reddening, R_V. We adopt a fairly simple functional form for the size distribution, characterized by several parameters. We tabulate these parameters for various combinations of values for R_V and b_C, the C abundance in very small grains. We also find size distributions for the line of sight to HD 210121, and for sightlines in the LMC and SMC. For several size distributions, we evaluate the albedo and scattering asymmetry parameter, and present model extinction curves extending beyond the Lyman limit.

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arXiv2000

On Ultrasmall Silicate Grains in the Diffuse Interstellar Medium

The abundance of both amorphous and crystalline silicates in very small grains is limited by the fact that the 10 micron silicate emission feature is not detected in the diffuse ISM. On the basis of the observed IR emission spectrum for the diffuse ISM, the observed ultraviolet extinction curve, and the 10 micron silicate absorption profile, we obtain upper limits on the abundances of ultrasmall (a < 15 Angstrom) amorphous and crystalline silicate grains. Contrary to previous work, as much as ~20% of interstellar Si could be in a < 15 Angstrom silicate grains without violating observational constraints. Not more than ~5% of the Si can be in crystalline silicates (of any size).

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arXiv2000

Infrared Emission from Interstellar Dust. I. Stochastic Heating of Small Grains

We present a method for calculating the infrared emission from a population of dust grains heated by starlight, including very small grains for which stochastic heating by starlight photons results in high temperature transients. Because state-to-state transition rates are generally unavailable for complex molecules, we consider model PAH, graphitic, and silicate grains with realistic vibrational mode spectra and realistic radiative properties. The vibrational density of states is used in a statistical-mechanical description of the emission process. Unlike previous treatments, our approach fully incorporates multiphoton heating effects, important for large grains or strong radiation fields. We discuss how the "temperature" of the grain is related to its vibrational energy. By comparing with an "exact" statistical calculation of the emission process, we determine the conditions under which the "thermal" and the "continuous cooling" approximations can be used to calculate the emission spectrum. We present results for the infrared emission spectra of PAH grains of various sizes heated by starlight. We show how the relative strengths of the 6.2, 7.7, and 11.3um features depend on grain size, starlight spectrum and intensity, and grain charging conditions. We show results for grains in the "cold neutral medium", "warm ionized medium", and representative conditions in photodissociation regions. Our model results are compared to observed ratios of emission features for reflection nebulae and photodissociation regions, the Milky Way, normal spiral galaxies, and starburst galaxies.

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arXiv2000

Forces on Dust Grains Exposed to Anisotropic Interstellar Radiation Fields

Grains exposed to anisotropic radiation fields are subjected to forces due to the asymmetric photon-stimulated ejection of particles. These forces act in addition to the ``radiation pressure'' due to absorption and scattering. Here we model the forces due to photoelectron emission and the photodesorption of adatoms. The ``photoelectric'' force depends on the ambient conditions relevant to grain charging. We find that it is comparable to the radiation pressure when the grain potential is relatively low and the radiation spectrum is relatively hard. The calculation of the ``photodesorption'' force is highly uncertain, since the surface physics and chemsitry of grain materials are poorly understood at present. For our simple yet plausible model, the photodesorption force dominates the radiation pressure for grains with size >~0.1 micron exposed to starlight from OB stars. We find that the anisotropy of the interstellar radiation field is ~10% in the visible and ultraviolet. We estimate size-dependent drift speeds for grains in the cold and warm neutral media and find that micron-sized grains could potentially be moved across a diffuse cloud during its lifetime.

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arXiv2000

Excitation of H_2 and HD in shocks and PDRs

Photodissociation regions (PDRs) and shocks give rise to conspicuous emission from rotationally and vibrationally excited molecular hydrogen. This line emission has now been studied with ISO and from the ground in great detail. A remarkable discovery has been that toward the Orion outflow and other shock-excited regions, the H_2 level populations show a very high excitation component. We suggest that these high-excitation populations may arise from non-thermal pumping processes, such as H_2 formation and high-velocity ion-molecule collision in partially dissociative shocks. In PDRs such as NGC 7023 however, formation pumping is always less important than fluorescent pumping. We furthermore present two HD emission line detections toward Orion Peak 1. This enables the first comparison of the H_2 and the HD excitation, which surprisingly turn out to be identical.

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arXiv2000

Photoelectric Emission from Interstellar Dust: Grain Charging and Gas Heating

We model the photoelectric emission from and charging of interstellar dust and obtain photoelectric gas heating efficiencies as a function of grain size and the relevant ambient conditions. Using realistic grain size distributions, we evaluate the net gas heating rate for various interstellar environments, and find less heating for dense regions characterized by R_V=5.5 than for diffuse regions with R_V=3.1. We provide fitting functions which reproduce our numerical results for photoelectric heating and recombination cooling for a wide range of interstellar conditions. In a separate paper we will examine the implications of these results for the thermal structure of the interstellar medium. Finally, we investigate the potential importance of photoelectric heating in H II regions, including the warm ionized medium. We find that photoelectric heating could be comparable to or exceed heating due to photoionization of H for high ratios of the radiation intensity to the gas density. We also find that photoelectric heating by dust can account for the observed variation of temperature with distance from the galactic midplane in the warm ionized medium.

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arXiv2000

Theoretical Models of Photodissociation Fronts

Observations of H2 line emission have revealed higher-than-expected gas temperatures in a number of photodissociation fronts. We discuss the heating and cooling processes in photodissociation regions. Observations of NGC 2023 are compared to a theoretical model in which there is substantial gas at temperatures T = 500-1000K heated by photoelectric emission and collisional deexcitation of H2. In general the model successfully reproduces the observed H2 line emission from a wide range of energy levels. The observed [SiII]34.8um emission appears to indicate substantial depletion of Si in NGC 2023.

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arXiv2000

Interstellar Grains

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 of sizes, from molecules containing only tens of atoms, to particles containing 10^{10} atoms. Most of the grain mass appears to be due to two types of solid, in approximately equal amounts: amorphous silicate mineral, and carbonaceous material. Approximately 2/3 of the interstellar carbon in diffuse clouds is in solid form. Interstellar grains are important for many reasons: they obscure our view (in a wavelength-dependent manner); the infrared emission from dust provides a valuable probe of dense regions; and because dust grains play a central role in interstellar chemistry, gas dynamics, and heating and cooling of interstellar gas.

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arXiv2000

Resonance Paramagnetic Relaxation and Alignment of Small Grains

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 ``resonance relaxation''. The differences between the predictions of classical Davis-Greenstein relaxation and resonance relaxation are most pronounced for grains rotating faster than 1 GHz, i.e., in the domain where classical paramagnetic relaxation is suppressed. This mechanism can partially align even very small grains, resulting in linearly polarized microwave emission which could interfere with efforts to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background.

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arXiv1999

Dust sublimation by GRBs and its implications

The prompt optical flash recently detected accompanying GRB990123 suggests that, for at least some GRBs, gamma-ray emission is accompanied by prompt optical-UV emission with luminosity L(1-7.5eV)=10^{49}(ΔΩ/4π)erg/s, where ΔΩis the solid angle into which gamma-ray and optical-UV emission is beamed. Such an optical-UV flash can destroy dust in the beam by sublimation out to an appreciable distance, approximately 10 pc, and may clear the dust out of as much as 10^7(ΔΩ/4π)M_sun of molecular cloud material on an apparent time scale of 10 seconds. Detection of time dependent extinction on this time scale would therefore provide strong constraints on the GRB source environment. Dust destruction implies that existing, or future, observations of not-heavily-reddened fireballs are not inconsistent with GRBs being associated with star forming regions. In this case, however, if gamma-ray emission is highly beamed, the expanding fireball would become reddened on a 1 week time scale. If the optical depth due to dust beyond approximately 8 pc from the GRB is 0.2<τ_V<2, most of the UV flash energy is converted to infra-red, λ\sim 1 micron, radiation with luminosity \sim 10^{41} erg/s extending over an apparent duration of \sim 20(1+z)(ΔΩ/0.01) day. Dust infra-red emission may already have been observed in GRB970228 and GRB980326, and may possibly explain their unusual late time behavior.

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arXiv1999

H_2 Absorption and Fluorescence for Gamma Ray Bursts in Molecular Clouds

If a gamma ray burst with strong UV emission occurs in a molecular cloud, there will be observable consequences resulting from excitation of the surrounding H2. The UV pulse from the GRB will pump H2 into vibrationally-excited levels which produce strong absorption at wavelengths < 1650 A. As a result, both the prompt flash and later afterglow will exhibit strong absorption shortward of 1650 A, with specific spectroscopic features. Such a cutoff in the emission from GRB 980329 may already have been observed by Fruchter et al.; if so, GRB 980329 was at redshift 3.0 < z < 4.4 . BVRI photometry of GRB 990510 could also be explained by H2 absorption if GRB 990510 is at redshift 1.6 < z < 2.3. The fluorescence accompanying the UV pumping of the H2 will result in UV emission from the GRB which can extend over days or months, depending on parameters of the ambient medium and beaming of the GRB flash. The 7.5-13.6 eV fluorescent luminosity is \sim 10^{41.7} erg/s for standard estimates of the parameters of the GRB and the ambient medium. Spectroscopy can distinguish this fluorescent emission from other possible sources of transient optical emission, such as a supernova.

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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

Heating the Gas in Photodissociation Fronts

ISO has provided us with a new perspective on gas temperatures in photodissociation regions through measurements of line emission from rotationally-excited levels of the H_2 molecule. The H_2 rotational level populations provide a thermal probe, showing that gas temperatures T_gas approx 500-1000 K prevail in a portion of the PDR where significant quantities of H_2 are present. Such high gas temperatures were unexpected. Theoretical models for the S140 PDR are presented. Possible mechanisms for heating the gas to such high temperatures are discussed.

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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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arXiv1998

A near-infrared study of the planetary nebula NGC 2346

This paper presents new near-infrared observations of the planetary nebula NGC 2346. The data include a broad K-band image, an image in the H2 vibrationally excited 1-0S(1) line and K band slit spectra at three positions in the nebula. In the H2 1-0S(1) line, the nebula is characterized by a central, bright torus, surrounded by weaker emission with a typical butterfly shape, as seen in Halpha and CO lines. The K band spectra show 11 H2 lines with excitation energies from 6150 to 12552 K. The H2 data have been compared to the predictions of models which follow the evolution with time of the H2 emission in PNe of different core mass and shell properties (Natta & Hollenbach 1998). These models compute the emission originating in the photodissociation region (PDR) created at the inner edge of the neutral shell by the UV radiation of the central core, as well as the emission in the shock associated to the expansion of the shell inside the precursor red-giant wind. In NGC 2346, a PDR origin of the H2 emission in a low-density molecular shell (n<~10^4 cm^-3) is indicated. At these low densities, time-dependent H2 chemistry and X-ray heating of the neutral gas enhance the predicted PDR H2 line intensity by large factors.

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arXiv1998

Lensing of Stars by Spherical Gas Clouds

If the Galaxy contains ~10^{11}M_sol in cold gas clouds of ~Jovian mass and ÃU size, these clouds will act as converging lenses for optical light, magnifying background stars at a detectable rate. The resulting light curves can resemble those due to gravitational lensing by a point mass, raising the possibility that some of the events attributed to gravitational microlensing might in fact be due to ``gaseous lensing''. During a lensing event, the lens would impose narrow infrared and far-red H_2 absorption lines on the stellar spectrum. Existing programs to observe gravitational microlensing, supplemented by spectroscopy, can therefore be used to either detect such events or place limits on the number of such gas clouds present in the Galaxy.

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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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