546 research outputs found
Driven waves in a two-fluid plasma
We study the physics of wave propagation in a weakly ionised plasma, as it
applies to the formation of multifluid, MHD shock waves. We model the plasma as
separate charged and neutral fluids which are coupled by ion-neutral friction.
At times much less than the ion-neutral drag time, the fluids are decoupled and
so evolve independently. At later times, the evolution is determined by the
large inertial mismatch between the charged and neutral particles. The neutral
flow continues to evolve independently; the charged flow is driven by and
slaved to the neutral flow by friction. We calculate this driven flow
analytically by considering the special but realistic case where the charged
fluid obeys linearized equations of motion. We carry out an extensive analysis
of linear, driven, MHD waves. The physics of driven MHD waves is embodied in
certain Green functions which describe wave propagation on short time scales,
ambipolar diffusion on long time scales, and transitional behavior at
intermediate times. By way of illustration, we give an approximate solution for
the formation of a multifluid shock during the collision of two identical
interstellar clouds. The collision produces forward- and reverse J shocks in
the neutral fluid and a transient in the charged fluid. The latter rapidly
evolves into a pair of magnetic precursors on the J shocks, wherein the ions
undergo force free motion and the magnetic field grows monotonically with time.
The flow appears to be self similar at the time when linear analysis ceases to
be valid.Comment: 18 pages including 24 figures, accepted by MNRA
An adiabatic approximation for grain alignment theory
The alignment of interstellar dust grains is described by the joint
distribution function for certain ``internal'' and ``external'' variables,
where the former describe the orientation of a grain's axes with respect to its
angular momentum, J, and the latter describe the orientation of J relative to
the interstellar magnetic field. I show how the large disparity between the
dynamical timescales of the internal and external variables--- which is
typically 2--3 orders of magnitude--- can be exploited to greatly simplify
calculations of the required distribution. The method is based on an
``adiabatic approximation'' which closely resembles the Born-Oppenheimer
approximation in quantum mechanics. The adiabatic approximation prescribes an
analytic distribution function for the ``fast'' dynamical variables and a
simplified Fokker-Planck equation for the ``slow'' variables which can be
solved straightforwardly using various techniques. These solutions are accurate
to order epsilon, where epsilon is the ratio of the fast and slow dynamical
timescales. As a simple illustration of the method, I derive an analytic
solution for the joint distribution established when Barnett relaxation acts in
concert with gas damping. The statistics of the analytic solution agree with
the results of laborious numerical calculations which do not exploit the
adiabatic approximation.Comment: 22 pages (LaTeX+4 eps figs); accepted by MNRAS 6/30/9
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.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure. Accepted to MNRA
Barnett Relaxation in Thermally-Rotating Grains
We present an exact formulation of the physics of Barnett relaxation. Our
formulation is based on a realistic kinetic model of the relaxation mechanism
which includes the alignment of the grain angular momentum in body coordinates
by Barnett dissipation, disalignment by thermal fluctuations, and coupling of
the angular momentum to the gas via gas damping. We solve the Fokker-Planck
equation for the measure of internal alignment using numerical integration of
the equivalent Langevin equation for Brownian rotation. The accuracy of our
results is calibrated by comparing our numerical solutions with exact analytic
results obtained for special cases.We describe an analytic approximation for
the measure of alignment which fits our numerical results for cases of
practical interest.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures. Accepted to ApJ
The Role of Grain Surface Reactions in the Chemistry of Star Forming Regions
The importance of reactions at the surfaces of dust grains has long been recognized to be one of the two main chemical processes that form molecules in cold, dark interstellar clouds where simple, saturated (fully-hydrogenated) molecules such as H2 water, methanol, H2CO, H2S, ammonia and CH4 are present in quantities far too high to be consistent with their extremely low gas phase formation rates. In cold dark regions of interstellar space, dust grains provide a substrate onto which gas-phase species can accrete and react. Grains provide a "third body" or a sink for the energy released in the exothermic reactions that form chemical bonds. In essence, the surfaces of dust grains open up alternative reaction pathways to form observed molecules whose abundances cannot be explained with gas-phase chemistry alone. This concept is taken one step further in this work: instead of merely acting as a substrate onto which radicals and molecules may physically adsorb, some grains may actively participate in the reaction itself, forming chemical bonds with the accreting species. Until recently, surface chemical reactions had not been thought to be important in warm circumstellar media because adspecies rapidly desorb from grains at very low temperatures; thus, the residence times of molecules and radicals on the surface of grains at all but the lowest temperatures are far too short to allow these reactions to occur. However, if the adspecies could adsorb more strongly, via a true chemical bond with surfaces of some dust grains, then grain surface reactions will play an important role in warm circumstellar regions as well. In this work, the surface-catalyzed reaction CO + 3 H2 yields CH4 + H2O is studied in the context that it may be very effective at converting the inorganic molecule CO into the simplest organic compound, methane. H2 and CO are the most abundant molecules in space, and the reaction converting them to methane, while kinetically inhibited in the gas phase under most astrophysical conditions, is catalyzed by iron, an abundant constituent of interstellar dust. At temperatures between 600 and 1000 K, which occur in the outflows from red giants and near luminous young stars, this reaction readily proceeds in the presence of an iron catalyst. Iron is one of the more abundant elements composing interstellar dust. Its abundance relative to hydrogen is almost that of silicon, and both of these heavy elements are primarily locked up in dust at all but the hottest regions of interstellar space
Interstellar Polarization in the Taurus Dark Clouds, Wavelength Dependent Position Angles and Cloud Structure Near TMC-1
We use polarimetric observations of two stars (HD29647, HD283809) in the
general direction of TMC-1 in the Taurus Dark Cloud to investigate grain
properties and cloud structure in this region. We show the data to be
consistent with a simple two-component model, in which general interstellar
polarization in the Taurus Cloud is produced by a widely distributed cloud
component with relatively uniform magnetic field orientation; the light from
stars close to TMC-1 suffers additional polarization arising in one (or more)
subcloud(s) with larger average grain size and different magnetic field
directions compared with the general trend. Towards HD29647, in particular, we
show that the unusually low degree of visual polarization relative to
extinction is due to the presence of distinct cloud components in the line of
sight with markedly different magnetic field orientations. Stokes parameter
calculations allow us to separate out the polarization characteristics of the
individual components. Results are fit with the Serkowski empirical formula to
determine the degree and wavelength of maximum polarization. Whereas lambda_max
values in the widely distributed material are similar to the average (0.55um)
for the diffuse interstellar medium, the subcloud in line of sight to
HD~283809, the most heavily reddened star in our study, has lambda_max approx.
0.73um, indicating the presence of grains about 30% larger than this average.
Our model also predicts detectable levels of circular polarization toward both
HD~29647 and HD~283809.Comment: 17 pages including 6 figures, LaTeX, to appear in the Astrophysical
Journal, vol 48
Origin of the anomalous Hall Effect in overdoped n-type cuprates: current vertex corrections due to antiferromagnetic fluctuations
The anomalous magneto-transport properties in electron doped (n-type)
cuprates were investigated using Hall measurements at THz frequencies. The
complex Hall angle was measured in overdoped PrCeCuO samples (x=0.17 and 0.18) as a continuous function of
temperature above at excitation energies 5.24 and 10.5 meV. The results,
extrapolated to low temperatures, show that inelastic scattering introduces
electron-like contributions to the Hall response. First principle calculations
of the Hall angle that include current vertex corrections (CVC) induced by
electron interactions mediated by magnetic fluctuations in the Hall
conductivity reproduce the temperature, frequency, and doping dependence of the
experimental data. These results show that CVC effects are the source of the
anomalous Hall transport properties in overdoped ntype cuprates.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Herschel PACS Observations and Modeling of Debris Disks in the Tucana-Horologium Association
We present Herschel PACS photometry of seventeen B- to M-type stars in the 30
Myr-old Tucana-Horologium Association. This work is part of the Herschel Open
Time Key Programme "Gas in Protoplanetary Systems" (GASPS). Six of the
seventeen targets were found to have infrared excesses significantly greater
than the expected stellar IR fluxes, including a previously unknown disk around
HD30051. These six debris disks were fitted with single-temperature blackbody
models to estimate the temperatures and abundances of the dust in the systems.
For the five stars that show excess emission in the Herschel PACS photometry
and also have Spitzer IRS spectra, we fit the data with models of optically
thin debris disks with realistic grain properties in order to better estimate
the disk parameters. The model is determined by a set of six parameters:
surface density index, grain size distribution index, minimum and maximum grain
sizes, and the inner and outer radii of the disk. The best fitting parameters
give us constraints on the geometry of the dust in these systems, as well as
lower limits to the total dust masses. The HD105 disk was further constrained
by fitting marginally resolved PACS 70 micron imaging.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, Accepted to Ap
The Carbon-Rich Gas in the Beta Pictoris Circumstellar Disk
The edge-on disk surrounding the nearby young star Beta Pictoris is the
archetype of the "debris disks", which are composed of dust and gas produced by
collisions and evaporation of planetesimals, analogues of Solar System comets
and asteroids. These disks provide a window on the formation and early
evolution of terrestrial planets. Previous observations of Beta Pic concluded
that the disk gas has roughly solar abundances of elements [1], but this poses
a problem because such gas should be rapidly blown away from the star, contrary
to observations of a stable gas disk in Keplerian rotation [1, 2]. Here we
report the detection of singly and doubly ionized carbon (CII, CIII) and
neutral atomic oxygen (OI) gas in the Beta Pic disk; measurement of these
abundant volatile species permits a much more complete gas inventory. Carbon is
extremely overabundant relative to every other measured element. This appears
to solve the problem of the stable gas disk, since the carbon overabundance
should keep the gas disk in Keplerian rotation [3]. New questions arise,
however, since the overabundance may indicate the gas is produced from material
more carbon-rich than the expected Solar System analogues.Comment: Accepted for publication in Nature. PDF document, 12 pages.
Supplementary information may be found at
http://www.dtm.ciw.edu/akir/Documents/roberge_supp.pdf *** Version 2 :
Removed extraneous publication information, per instructions from the Nature
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