Scattering, absorption, and thermal emission by large cometary dust particles: Synoptic numerical solution

Abstract

Context: Remote light scattering and thermal infrared observations provide clues about the physical properties of cometary and interplanetary dust particles. Identifying these properties will lead to a better understanding of the formation and evolution of the Solar System. Aims: We present a numerical solution for the radiative and conductive heat transport in a random particulate medium enclosed by an arbitrarily shaped surface. The method will be applied to study thermal properties of cometary dust particles. Methods: The recently introduced incoherent Monte Carlo radiative transfer method developed for scattering, absorption, and propagation of electromagnetic waves in dense discrete random media is extended for radiative heat transfer and thermal emission. The solution is coupled with the conductive Fourier transport equation that is solved with the finite-element method. Results: The proposed method allows the synoptic analysis of light scattering and thermal emission by large cometary dust particles consisting of submicrometer-sized grains. In particular, we show that these particles can sustain significant temperature gradients resulting in the superheating factor phase function observed for the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

7 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Synthesis of the Morphological Description of Cometary Dust at Comet 67P
• Thermal conductivity measurements of porous dust aggregates: I. Technique, model and first results
• Interpretation of the phase functions measured by the OSIRIS instrument for Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
• Models of Rosetta/OSIRIS 67P dust coma phase function
• Thermal conductivity of porous aggregates
• VIRTIS-H observations of comet 67P's dust coma: spectral properties and color temperature variability with phase and elevation
• Light Scattering and Thermal Emission by Primitive Dust Particles in Planetary Systems

Cited by in corpus (4)

• The dust-to-gas ratio, size distribution, and dust fall-back fraction of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: Inferences from linking the optical and dynamical properties of the inner comae
• High precision meteor observations with the Canadian Automated Meteor Observatory -- Data reduction pipeline and application to meteoroid mechanical strength measurements
• Cometary surface dust layers built out of millimetre-scale aggregates: dependence of modelled cometary gas production on the layer transport properties
• Thermophysical model for icy cometary dust particles