paper

SpyDust: an improved and extended implementation for modeling spinning dust radiation

arXiv:2412.03431 · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2025/03/038

Abstract

This paper presents 'SpyDust', an improved and extended implementation of the spinning dust emission model based on a Fokker-Planck treatment. 'SpyDust' serves not only as a Python successor to 'spdust', but also incorporates some corrections and extensions. Unlike 'spdust', which is focused on specific grain shapes, 'SpyDust' considers a wider range of grain shapes and provides the corresponding grain dynamics, directional radiation field and angular momentum transports. We recognise the unique effects of different grain shapes on emission, in particular the shape-dependent mapping between rotational frequency and spectral frequency. In addition, we update the expressions for effects of electrical dipole radiation back-reaction and plasma drag on angular momentum dissipation. We also discuss the degeneracies in describing the shape of the spectral energy distribution (SED) of spinning dust grains with the interstellar environmental parameters. Using a typical Cold Neutral Medium (CNM) environment as an example, we perform a perturbative analysis of the model parameters, revealing strong positive or negative correlations between them. A principal component analysis (PCA) shows that four dominant modes can linearly capture most of the SED variations, highlighting the degeneracy in the parameter space of the SED shape in the vicinity of the chosen CNM environment. This opens the possibility for future applications of moment expansion methods to reduce the dimensionality of the encountered SED parameter space.

arXiv comment39 pages, 13 figures, accepted by JCAP; Added Figure 2 to illustrate grain dynamics and emission mechanisms, and Figure 13 to show how the fitted SED evolve with number of principal modes

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