Constraining the Porosities of Interstellar Dust Grains

2009/06/04 by Kevin Heng, Bruce T. Draine, Heng, Kevin +2 · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #High-pressure geophysics and materials #astro-ph.GA

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0906.0773

10 pages (emulateapj), 8 figures, 1 table. Submitted to ApJ

arxiv created 2009/06/04 · openalex publication_date 2009/06/04 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We present theoretical calculations of the X-ray scattering properties of porous grain aggregates with olivine monomers. The small and large angle scattering properties of these aggregates are governed by the global structure and substructure of the grain, respectively. We construct two diagnostics, R_X and T_X, based on the optical and X-ray properties of the aggregates, and apply them to a Chandra measurement of the dust halo around the Galactic binary GX13+1. Grain aggregates with porosities higher than about 0.55 are ruled out. Future high-precision observations of X-ray dust haloes together with detailed modeling of the X-ray scattering properties of porous grain mixtures will further constrain the presence of porous grain aggregates in a given dust population.

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• Supernova Remnants as a Probe of Dust Grains in the Interstellar Medium

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