Synthesized grain size distribution in the interstellar medium

Abstract

We examine a synthetic way of constructing the grain size distribution in the interstellar medium (ISM). First we formulate a synthetic grain size distribution composed of three grain size distributions processed with the following mechanisms that govern the grain size distribution in the Milky Way: (i) grain growth by accretion and coagulation in dense clouds, (ii) supernova shock destruction by sputtering in diffuse ISM, and (iii) shattering driven by turbulence in diffuse ISM. Then, we examine if the observational grain size distribution in the Milky Way (called MRN) is successfully synthesized or not. We find that the three components actually synthesize the MRN grain size distribution in the sense that the deficiency of small grains by (i) and (ii) is compensated by the production of small grains by (iii). The fraction of each {contribution} to the total grain processing of (i), (ii), and (iii) (i.e., the relative importance of the three {contributions} to all grain processing mechanisms) is 30-50%, 20-40%, and 10-40%, respectively. We also show that the Milky Way extinction curve is reproduced with the synthetic grain size distributions.

10 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Earth, Planets, and Space

References in corpus (10)

• Dust Formation and Survival in Supernova Ejecta
• Evolution of interstellar dust and stardust in the solar neighbourhood
• Dust formation history of galaxies: a critical role of metallicity for the dust mass growth by accreting materials in the interstellar medium
• Dust Destruction in the High-Velocity Shocks Driven by Supernovae in the Early Universe
• Shattering and coagulation of dust grains in interstellar turbulence
• Dust growth in the interstellar medium: How do accretion and coagulation interplay?
• Effects of grain size distribution on the interstellar dust mass growth
• The Role of Dust in the Early Universe I : Protogalaxy Evolution
• The origin of dust in galaxies revisited: the mechanism determining dust content
• Dust driven mass loss from carbon stars as function of stellar parameters - II. Effects of grain size on wind properties

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Condition for the formation of micron-sized dust grains in dense molecular cloud cores
• Evolution of dust grain size distribution by shattering in the interstellar medium: robustness and uncertainty
• Properties of interstellar dust responsible for extinction laws with unusually low total-to-selective extinction ratios of Rv=1-2
• Multi-wavelength observations and modelling of a quiescent cloud LDN1512
• Dust growth in molecular cloud envelopes: a numerical approach
• From small dust to micron-sized aggregates: the influence of structure and composition on the dust optical properties