Improving the model of emission from spinning dust: effects of grain wobbling and transient spin-up

TL;DR

This paper refines the spinning dust emission model by incorporating grain wobbling, transient spin-up, and anisotropic effects, leading to significantly increased predicted emissivity and peak frequency across various interstellar media.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed physical model accounting for grain wobbling, transient spin-up, and anisotropic damping, improving predictions of spinning dust emission spectra.

Findings

Peak emissivity increases by a factor of ~2 to 4 across different media.

Emission peak frequency shifts upward by factors of 1.4 to 2.

Transient spin-up broadens the emission spectrum and enhances emissivity.

Abstract

Observations continue to support the interpretation of the anomalous microwave foreground as electric dipole radiation from spinning dust grains as proposed by Draine and Lazarian (1998ab). In this paper we present a refinement of the original model by improving the treatment of a number of physical effects. First, we consider a disk-like grain rotating with angular velocity at an arbitrary angle with respect to the grain symmetry axis and derive the rotational damping and excitation coefficients arising from infrared emission, plasma-grain interactions and electric dipole emission. The angular velocity distribution and the electric dipole emission spectrum for grains is calculated using the Langevin equation, for cases both with and without fast internal relaxation. Our results show that, the peak emissivity of spinning dust, compared to earlier studies, increases by a factor of ~2 for the Warm Neutral Medium (WNM), the Warm Ionized Medium (WIM), the Cold Neutral Medium (CNM) and the Photodissociation Region (PDR), and by a factor ~4 for Reflection Nebulae (RN). The frequency at the emission peak also increases by factors ~1.4 to ~2 for these media. The increased emission and peak frequency result from the non-sphericity of grain shape and from the anisotropy in damping and excitation along directions parallel and perpendicular to the grain symmetry axis. Second, we provide a detailed numerical study including transient spin-up of grains by single-ion collisions. The impulses broaden the emission spectrum and increase the peak emissivity for the CNM, WNM and WIM. In addition, we present an improved treatment of rotational excitation and damping by infrared emission.