Hot Grain Dynamics by Electric Charging and Magnetic Trapping in Debris Disks

TL;DR

This study investigates the mechanisms behind the presence of hot dust grains near stars, critically examining magnetic trapping models and finding that sublimation and electric charging limit grain lifetimes, challenging previous assumptions.

Contribution

The paper reevaluates magnetic grain trapping models by incorporating sublimation and electric charging effects, revealing limitations in trapping hot dust grains near stars.

Findings

Magnetic trapping predicts hot dust near stars with high rotation and magnetic fields.

Detection of hot dust shows no correlation with stellar rotation or magnetic field strength.

Electric surface potential of submicrometer grains is 4-5 V, lower than previous assumptions.

Abstract

The recent discovery of hot dust grains in the vicinity of main-sequence stars has become a hot issue among the scientific community of debris disks. Hot grains must have been enormously accumulated near their sublimation zones, but it is a mystery how such a high concentration of hot grains is sustained. The most difficult conundrum is that the size of hot dust grains is estimated to lie in the submicrometer range, while submicrometer-sized grains are instantly swept away from near-stellar environments by stellar radiation pressure. One and only mechanism proposed for prolonging the residence time of hot grains in the near-stellar environments is trapping of charged nanoparticles by stellar magnetic fields. We revisit the model of magnetic grain trapping around main-sequence stars of various spectral classes by taking into account sublimation and electric charging of the grains. The model of magnetic grain trapping predicts that hot dust grains are present in the vicinity of main-sequence stars with high rotation velocities and intermediate magnetic-field strengths. On the contrary, we find that the detection of hot dust grains has no correlation with the rotation velocities of central stars nor the magnetic field strengths of the stars. Our numerical evaluation of electric grain charging indicates that the surface potential of submicrometer-sized grains in the vicinity of main-sequence stars is typically 4-5 V, which is one order of magnitude smaller than the value assumed by the model of magnetic grain trapping. On the basis of our numerical simulation on sublimation of dust grains in the vicinity of a star, it turns out that their lives end due to sublimation in a timescale much shorter than the period of one revolution at the gyroradius. It is, therefore, infeasible to dynamically extend the dwell time of hot grains inside the sublimation zone by magnetic trapping, ...