2018/03/13 by Aaron C. Bell, Takashi Onaka, Bell, Aaron C. +13
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1803.04888
openalex publication_date 2018/03/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The anomalous microwave emission (AME) still lacks a conclusive explanation. This excess of emission, roughly between 10 and 50 GHz, correlates spatially with interstellar dust, prompting a "spinning dust" hypothesis: electric dipole emission by rapidly rotating, small dust grains. The typical peak frequency range of the AME profile implicates grains on the order of ~1 nm, suggesting polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules (PAHs). We compare AKARI/Infrared Camera (IRC), with its thorough PAH-band coverage, to AME intensity estimates from the Planck Collaboration, in the λ Orionis region. We look also at infrared dust emission from other mid IR and far-IR bands. The results and discussion contained here apply to an angular scale of approximately 1°. In general, our results support an AME-from-dust hypothesis. In λ Orionis, we find that certainly dust mass correlates with AME, and that PAH-related emission in the AKARI/IRC 9 μm band may correlate slightly more strongly.