Cosmic Ray Sputtering of Dust Grains

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

Sputtering from grains with a size of tens of nanometers is important in a number of astrophysical scenarios [1]. Since excitations produced in a small, volatile grain by a cosmic ray ion can create `hot spots', thermal spike models have been applied to estimate the sputtering. However, these models work only over a very limited regime [2]. We use Molecular Dynamics (MD) calculations [3] to describe the energy transport and sputtering due to these `hot spots' in a grain with one quarter million particles, as a function of the energy deposited in the grain. We compare our results to the spike model as applied in [1] to the sputtering of small dust grains following the formation of a `hot spot', a model widely used in the astronomical community. We present a new model to estimate the final sputtering yield, and find that the sputtering of water could be several orders of magnitude larger than expected from previous models [1]. 1-T. Hasegawa and E. Herbst, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 261 (1993) 83. 2-E. M. Bringa, R. E. Johnson and M. Jakas, Phys. Rev. B 60 (1999) 15107. 3-http://dirac.ms.virginia.edu/ẽmb3t/grains/grains.html

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