Energetic Processing of Interstellar Silicate Grains by Cosmic Rays

Details Energetic Processing of Interstellar Silicate Grains by Cosmic Rays Energetic Processing of Interstellar Silicate Grains by Cosmic Rays

Jun 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007apj...662..372b&link_type=abstract

The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 662, Issue 1, pp. 372-378.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

20

Ism: Cosmic Rays, Ism: Dust, Extinction

Scientific paper

While a significant fraction of silicate dust in stellar winds has a crystalline structure, in the interstellar medium nearly all of it is amorphous. One possible explanation for this observation is the amorphization of crystalline silicates by relatively ``low'' energy, heavy-ion cosmic rays. Here we present the results of multiple laboratory experiments showing that single-crystal synthetic forsterite (Mg2SiO4) amorphizes when irradiated by 10 MeV Xe ions at large enough fluences. Using modeling, we extrapolate these results to show that 0.1-5.0 GeV heavy-ion cosmic rays can rapidly (~70 Myr) amorphize crystalline silicate grains ejected by stars into the interstellar medium.

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