Other
Scientific paper
May 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...210.7901h&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society Meeting 210, #79.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.186
Other
Scientific paper
We attempt to get a physical insight into grain alignment processes by studying basic properties of radiative torques (RATs). For this purpose we consider a simple toy model of a helical grain that reproduces well the basic features of RATs. The model grain consists of a reflecting spheroidal body with a reflecting mirror attached at an angle to it. Being very simple, the model allows analytical description of RATs that act upon it. We show a good correspondence of RATs obtained for this model and those of irregular grains calculated by DDSCAT. Our analysis of the role of different torque components for grain alignment reveals that one of the three RAT components does not affect the alignment, but induces only for grain precession. The other two components provide a generic alignment with grain long axes perpendicular to the light radiation, if the radiation dominates the grain precession, and perpendicular to magnetic field, otherwise. The latter coincides with the famous predictions of the Davis-Greenstein process, but our model does not invoke paramagnetic relaxation. In addition, we find that a substantial part of grains subjected to RATs gets aligned with low angular momentum, which testifies, that most of the grains in diffuse interstellar medium do not rotate fast, i.e. rotate with thermal or even sub-thermal velocities. For the radiation-dominated environments, we find that the alignment can take place on the time scale much shorter than the time of gaseous damping of grain rotation.
Hoang Thiem
Lazarian Alex
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