No Arabic abstract
We propose a new description of astronomical dust emission in the spectral region from the Far-Infrared to millimeter wavelengths. Unlike previous classical models, this description explicitly incorporates the effect of the disordered internal structure of amorphous dust grains. The model is based on results from solid state physics, used to interpret laboratory data. The model takes into account the effect of absorption by Disordered Charge Distribution, as well as the effect of absorption by localized Two Level Systems. We review constraints on the various free parameters of the model from theory and laboratory experimental data. We show that, for realistic values of the free parameters, the shape of the emission spectrum will exhibit very broad structures which shape will change with the temperature of dust grains in a non trivial way. The spectral shape also depends upon the parameters describing the internal structure of the grains. This opens new perspectives as to identifying the nature of astronomical dust from the observed shape of the FIR/mm emission spectrum. A companion paper will provide an explicit comparison of the model with astronomical data.
The description of the statistical properties of dust emission gives important constraints on the physics of the interstellar medium but it is also a useful way to estimate the contamination of diffuse interstellar emission in the cases where it is considered a nuisance. The main goals of this analysis of the power spectrum and non-Gaussian properties of 100 micron dust emission are 1) to estimate the power spectrum of interstellar matter density in three dimensions, 2) to review and extend previous estimates of the cirrus noise due to dust emission and 3) to produce simulated dust emission maps that reproduce the observed statistical properties. The main results are the following. 1) The cirrus noise level as a function of brightness has been previously overestimated. It is found to be proportional to <I> instead of <I>^1.5, where <I> is the local average brightness at 100 micron. This scaling is in accordance with the fact that the brightness fluctuation level observed at a given angular scale on the sky is the sum of fluctuations of increasing amplitude with distance on the line of sight. 2) The spectral index of dust emission at scales between 5 arcmin and 12.5 degrees is <gamma>=-2.9 on average but shows significant variations over the sky. Bright regions have systematically steeper power spectra than diffuse regions. 3) The skewness and kurtosis of brightness fluctuations is high, indicative of strong non-Gaussianity. 4) Based on our characterization of the 100 micron power spectrum we provide a prescription of the cirrus confusion noise as a function of wavelength and scale. 5) Finally we present a method based on a modification of Gaussian random fields to produce simulations of dust maps which reproduce the power spectrum and non-Gaussian properties of interstellar dust emission.
Interstellar polarization at far-infrared through millimeter wavelengths (0.1 - 1 mm) is primarily due to thermal emission from dust grains aligned with magnetic fields. This mechanism has led to studies of magnetic fields in a variety of celestial sources, as well as the physical characteristics of the dust grains and their interaction with the field. Observations have covered a diverse array of sources, from entire galaxies to molecular clouds and proto-stellar disks. Maps have been generated on a wide range of angular scales, from surveys covering large fractions of the sky, down to those with arcsecond spatial resolution. Additionally, the increasing availability of observations at multiple wavelengths in this band allows empirical tests of models of grain alignment and cloud structure. I review some of the recent work in this field, emphasizing comparisons of observations on multiple spatial scales and at multiple wavelengths.
Far-infrared and (sub)millimeter fluxes can be used to study dust in protoplanetary disks, the building blocks of planets. Here, we combine observations from the Herschel Space Observatory with ancillary data of 284 protoplanetary disks in the Taurus, Chamaeleon I, and Ophiuchus star-forming regions, covering from the optical to mm/cm wavelengths. We analyze their spectral indices as a function of wavelength and determine their (sub)millimeter slopes when possible. Most disks display observational evidence of grain growth, in agreement with previous studies. No correlation is found between other tracers of disk evolution and the millimeter spectral indices. A simple disk model is used to fit these sources, and we derive posterior distributions for the optical depth at 1.3 mm and 10 au, the disk temperature at this same radius, and the dust opacity spectral index. We find the fluxes at 70 microns to correlate strongly with disk temperatures at 10 au, as derived from these simple models. We find tentative evidence for spectral indices in Chamaeleon I being steeper than those of disks in Taurus/Ophiuchus, although more millimeter observations are needed to confirm this trend and identify its possible origin. Additionally, we determine the median spectral energy distribution of each region and find them to be similar across the entire wavelength range studied, possibly due to the large scatter in disk properties and morphologies.
The ISOPHOT instrument aboard ISO has been used to observe extended FIR emission of six Abell clusters. The raw profiles of the I_(120 um) / I_(180 um) surface brightness ratio including zodiacal light show a bump towards Abell 1656 (Coma), dips towards Abell 262 and Abell 2670, and are without clear structure towards Abell 400, Abell 496, and Abell 4038. After subtraction of the zodiacal light, the bump towards Abell 1656 is still present, while the dips towards Abell 262 and Abell 2670 are no longer noticable. This indicates a localized excess of emitting material outside the Galaxy towards Abell 1656, while the behavior in Abell 262 and Abell 2670 can be reconciled with galactic cirrus structures localized on the line-of-sight to these clusters. The excess towards Abell 1656 (Coma) is interpreted as thermal emission from intracluster dust distributed in the hot X-ray emitting intracluster medium. The absence of any signature for intracluster dust in five clusters and the rather low inferred dust mass in Abell 1656 indicates that intracluster dust is likely not responsible for the excess X-ray absorption seen in cooling flow clusters. These observations thereby represent a further unsuccessful attempt in detecting the presumed final stage of the cooling flow material, in accord with quite a number of previous studies in other wavelengths regions. Finally, the observed dimming of the high-redshift supernovae is unlikely be attributable to extinction caused by dust in the intracluster or even a presumed intercluster medium.
We investigate the star forming activity of a sample of infrared (IR)-bright dust-obscured galaxies (DOGs) that show an extreme red color in the optical and IR regime, $(i - [22])_{rm AB} > 7.0$. Combining an IR-bright DOG sample with the flux at 22 $mu$m $>$ 3.8 mJy discovered by Toba & Nagao (2016) with IRAS faint source catalog version 2 and AKARI far-IR (FIR) all-sky survey bright source catalog version 2, we selected 109 DOGs with FIR data. For a subsample of 7 IR-bright DOGs with spectroscopic redshift ($0.07 < z < 1.0$) that was obtained from literature, we estimated their IR luminosity, star formation rate (SFR), and stellar mass based on the spectral energy distribution fitting. We found that (i) WISE 22 $mu$m luminosity at observed frame is a good indicator of IR luminosity for IR-bright DOGs and (ii) the contribution of active galactic nucleus (AGN) to IR luminosity increases with IR luminosity. By comparing the stellar mass and SFR relation for our DOG sample and literature, we found that most of IR-bright DOGs lie significantly above the main sequence of star-forming galaxies at similar redshift, indicating that the majority of IRAS- and/or AKARI-detected IR-bright DOGs are starburst galaxies.