VLT spectropolarimetry of comet 67P: Dust environment around the end of its intense Southern summer

TL;DR

This study uses VLT spectropolarimetry to analyze dust properties of comet 67P, revealing its dust composition, size, porosity, and potential water ice content, and how these evolve near the end of its Southern summer.

Contribution

It provides new spectropolarimetric data of 67P's dust, combined with modeling, to better understand its dust environment and composition at a specific cometary phase.

Findings

Dust polarisation is flatter than in other comets.

Negative polarisation branch is shallower and may be evolving.

Dust likely consists of agglomerates around 100 μm with 60% porosity.

Abstract

We report our new spectropolarimetric observations for 67P dust over 4,000--9,000 Angstrom using the ESO/Very Large Telescope in January--March 2016 (phase angle ranging $\sim$26--5 deg) to constrain the properties of the dust particles of 67P and therefrom diagnose the dust environment of its coma and near-surface layer at around the end of the Southern summer of the comet. We examined the optical behaviours of the dust, which, together with Rosetta colour data, were used to search for dust evolution with cometocentric distance. Modelling was also conducted to identify the dust attributes compatible with the results. The spectral dependence of the polarisation degree of 67P dust is flatter than found in other dynamical groups of comets in similar observing geometry. The depth of its negative polarisation branch appears to be a bit shallower than in long-period comets and might be getting shallower as 67P repeats its apparitions. Its dust colour shows a change in slope around 5,500 Angstrom, (17.3 $\pm$ 1.4) and (10.9 $\pm$ 0.6) % (1,000 Angstrom)$^{\rm -1}$ for shortward and longward of the wavelength, respectively, which are slightly redder but broadly consistent with the average of Jupiter-Family comets. Observations of 67P dust in this study can be attributed to dust agglomerates of $\sim$100 $\mu$m in size detected by Rosetta in early 2016. A porosity of 60 % shows the best match with our polarimetric results, yielding a dust density of $\sim$770 kg m$^{\rm -3}$. Compilation of Rosetta and our data indicates the dust's reddening with increasing nucleus distance, which may be driven by water-ice sublimation as the dust moves out of the nucleus. We estimate the possible volume fraction of water ice in the initially ejected dust as $\sim$6 % (i.e. the refractory-to-ice volume ratio of $\sim$14).