The sedimentation of grains in interstellar clouds

Details The sedimentation of grains in interstellar clouds The sedimentation of grains in interstellar clouds

Jul 1978

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1978apj...223..447f&link_type=abstract

Astrophysical Journal, Part 1, vol. 223, July 15, 1978, p. 447-457.

Other

27

Cosmic Dust, Gravitational Effects, Interstellar Matter, Spatial Distribution, Astronomical Models, Charged Particles, Clouds, Isothermal Processes, Optical Thickness, Rates (Per Time)

Scientific paper

Gravitational sedimentation of dust grains is analyzed for two idealized spherically symmetric models of interstellar clouds: (1) a uniform-density uniform-temperature model, which permits exact analytic solution, and (2) an isothermal hydrostatic-equilibrium model. Starting from a uniform mix of dust and gas, the ratio of dust density to gas density increases as e to the t/tau power with time constant tau of the order of 100 million years for typical cloud parameters. For optically thin dust distributions, the ambient interstellar radiation field can increase the infall rate by an order of magnitude. An analytic solution is also found for sedimentation in a uniform magnetic field; this leads to pancake-shaped dust distributions. Finally a scenario is presented for the formation of massive clouds, which would imply that interstellar clouds have highly inhomogeneous dust distributions.

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