On Graphene in the Interstellar Medium

TL;DR

This study investigates the presence and detectability of graphene in the interstellar medium through quantum-chemical calculations, modeling UV absorption and IR emission, and constrains its abundance to less than 5 ppm of interstellar carbon.

Contribution

It provides the first quantitative assessment of interstellar graphene's abundance and its spectral signatures, linking laboratory data with astrophysical observations.

Findings

Interstellar graphene abundance is constrained to <5 ppm of C/H.

Graphene exhibits a strong UV absorption near 2755 Å.

IR emission modeling suggests detectable signatures consistent with observations.

Abstract

The possible detection of C_{24}, a planar graphene, recently reported in several planetary nebulae by Garciaa-Hernandez et al. (2011, 2012) inspires us to explore whether and how much graphene could exist in the interstellar medium (ISM) and how it would reveal its presence through its ultraviolet (UV) extinction and infrared (IR) emission. In principle, interstellar graphene could arise from the photochemical processing of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules which are abundant in the ISM through a complete loss of their hydrogen atoms and/or from graphite which is thought to be a major dust species in the ISM through fragmentation caused by grain-grain collisional shattering. Both quantum-chemical computations and laboratory experiments have shown that the exciton-dominated electronic transitions in graphene cause a strong absorption band near 2755 Angstrom. We calculate the UV absorption of graphene and place an upper limit of ~5 ppm of C/H (i.e., ~1.9\% of the total interstellar C) on the interstellar graphene abundance. We also model the stochastic heating of graphene C_{24} excited by single starlight photons of the interstellar radiation field in the ISM and calculate its IR emission spectra. We also derive the abundance of graphene in the ISM to be <5 ppm of C/H by comparing the model emission spectra with that observed in the ISM.