Rotational Disruption of Dust Grains by Radiative Torques in Strong Radiation Fields

TL;DR

This paper introduces the RATD mechanism, where radiative torques rapidly spin up large dust grains causing their disruption, explaining observed infrared excess and dust properties near luminous astrophysical sources.

Contribution

The study proposes and demonstrates the RATD mechanism as a new process for dust destruction, accounting for small grain dominance in strong radiation environments.

Findings

RATD can disrupt large grains within 1 pc of luminous stars or supernovae.

The mechanism explains infrared excess and anomalous dust extinction and polarization.

RATD predicts small grain dominance within 0.1 pc of kilonovae and explains UV extinction features.

Abstract

Massive stars, supernovae, and kilonovae are among the most luminous radiation sources in the universe. Observations usually show near- to mid-infrared (NIR--MIR, $\lambda\sim 1-5~\mu$m) emission excess from H\,{\sc ii} regions around young massive star clusters (YMSCs). Early phase observations in optical to NIR wavelengths of type Ia supernovae also reveal unusual properties of dust extinction and dust polarization. The popular explanation for such NIR-MIR excess and unusual dust properties is the predominance of small grains (size $a\lesssim 0.05~\mu$m) relative to large grains ($a\gtrsim 0.1~\mu$m) in the local environment of these strong radiation sources. The question of why small grains are predominant in these environments remains a mystery. Here we report a new mechanism of dust destruction based on centrifugal stress within extremely fast-rotating grains spun-up by radiative torques, which we term the RAdiative Torque Disruption (RATD) mechanism. We find that RATD can disrupt large grains located within a distance of $\sim 1$ pc from a massive star of luminosity $L\sim 10^{4}L_{\odot}$ or a supernova. This effect increases the abundance of small grains relative to large grains and successfully reproduces the observed NIR-MIR excess and anomalous dust extinction/polarization. We apply the RATD mechanism for kilonovae and find that dust within $\sim$ 0.1 pc would be dominated by small grains. Small grains produced by RATD can also explain the steep far-UV rise in extinction curves toward starburst and high redshift galaxies, and the decrease of the escape fraction of Ly$\alpha$ photons from H\,{\sc ii} regions surrounding YMSCs.