Mechanical alignment of suprathermally rotating grains

Abstract

It is shown that mechanical alignment of grains can be efficient for grains rotating suprathermally, i.e. with kinetic energy substantially exceeding $k$ (the Boltzmann constant) over any temperature in the system. The paper studies suprathermal rotation caused by H${}_2$ formation and the alignment that takes place due to crossover events. Gaseous bombardment in the course of a crossover as well as both gaseous friction and poisoning of active sites are shown to produce alignment. The first type of alignment happens due to the angular momentum deposited by a corpuscular flux with a grain, the second is caused by the change of the mean time back to crossover due to the interaction with a gaseous flux. We show that the two processes act as to decrease the grain cross section in respect to the flux and we find the Rayleigh reduction factor for the joint action of the two processes as well as the range of applicability of each of the processes. Our study indicates that mechanical alignment can be more widely spread than it is generally accepted.

39 pages, uuencoded Postcript, Accepted to ApJ

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