Temperature spectra of interstellar dust grains heated by cosmic-rays II: dark cloud cores

TL;DR

This paper provides detailed temperature spectra for interstellar dust grains heated by cosmic rays in dark cloud cores, considering grain size, ice mantle thickness, and cosmic-ray spectra to improve astrochemical models.

Contribution

It introduces comprehensive temperature spectra for CR-heated grains in dark clouds, accounting for various grain sizes, ice mantles, and cosmic-ray constituents, enhancing existing models.

Findings

Calculated energy and temperature spectra for grains in dark cores.

Quantified frequencies of cosmic-ray hits on grains.

Improved modeling of CR-induced grain heating in astrochemistry.

Abstract

Cosmic-ray (CR) induced heating of whole interstellar grains is an important desorption mechanism for grain surface molecules in interstellar molecular clouds. This study aims to provide a detailed temperature spectra for such CR-induced heating. For this, olivine grains with radius of 0.05, 0.1 and 0.2 microns shielded by interstellar gas with isotropic column densities characteristic to dark cores were considered. The accumulation of an ice mantle of increasing thickness was taken into account. The CR energy spectra was obtained for these column densities for 32 cosmic-ray constituents. We calculated the frequencies with which a CR nucleus with a known energy hits a grain, depositing a certain amount of energy. As a result, we obtain the energy and temperature spectra for grains affected by CR hits. This allows to improve the existing approaches on CR-induced whole-grain heating in astrochemical modeling.