Dust Acceleration in Radiative Shocks: Seeds of Cosmic Rays?

Details Dust Acceleration in Radiative Shocks: Seeds of Cosmic Rays? Dust Acceleration in Radiative Shocks: Seeds of Cosmic Rays?

Jan 2012

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21944411s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #444.11

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Scientific paper

Diffusive shock acceleration in fast shocks in the interstellar medium (ISM) appears to be the best candidate for a mechanism to accelerate cosmic rays. However, the means to achieve the initial injection of cosmic ray nuclei with the suprathermal energies that are large enough to facilitate the acceleration to the high energies observed remains a source of difficulty. In addition cosmic ray composition corresponds well with the composition of interstellar dust. Using dust as the source of the cosmic rays can explain many aspects of the galactic cosmic ray observations, but models to date have assumed dust acceleration/destruction in very fast shocks, v(shock) > 400 km/s. Such shocks cover a fairly small volume of typical ISM. Here we present the results of models for the acceleration and destruction of grains in radiative shocks with v(shock) = 50 - 200 km/s, which are expected to cover a relatively large volume of the ISM. We find that for certain grain sizes and shock speeds a substantial fraction of the grain mass is returned to the gas phase upstream of the shock with an initial energy corresponding to several hundred to 1000 or so km/s. Such newly liberated atoms and ions are then available for subsequent acceleration to cosmic ray energies.
This research has been supported by NASA's Astrophysics Theory Program.

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