The turbulent life of dust grains in the supernova-driven, multi-phase interstellar medium

TL;DR

This study uses advanced hydrodynamical simulations to measure how long dust grains stay in different interstellar medium phases and how they transition between these phases, revealing complex circulation patterns.

Contribution

First direct measurement of dust residence times and transition rates in the multi-phase ISM using realistic simulations with chemical networks and radiation transfer.

Findings

Residence times vary broadly across ISM phases.

Transition rates are higher than in simple models.

Simulation results align with observed gas-phase depletion patterns.

Abstract

Dust grains are an important component of the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies. We present the first direct measurement of the residence times of interstellar dust in the different ISM phases, and of the transition rates between these phases, in realistic hydrodynamical simulations of the multi-phase ISM. Our simulations include a time-dependent chemical network that follows the abundances of H^+, H, H_2, C^+ and CO and take into account self-shielding by gas and dust using a tree-based radiation transfer method. Supernova explosions are injected either at random locations, at density peaks, or as a mixture of the two. For each simulation, we investigate how matter circulates between the ISM phases and find more sizeable transitions than considered in simple mass exchange schemes in the literature. The derived residence times in the ISM phases are characterised by broad distributions, in particular for the molecular, warm and hot medium. The most realistic simulations with random and mixed driving have median residence times in the molecular, cold, warm and hot phase around 17, 7, 44 and 1 Myr, respectively. The transition rates measured in the random driving run are in good agreement with observations of Ti gas-phase depletion in the warm and cold phases in a simple depletion model, although the depletion in the molecular phase is under-predicted. ISM phase definitions based on chemical abundance rather than temperature cuts are physically more meaningful, but lead to significantly different transition rates and residence times because there is no direct correspondence between the two definitions.