Coagulation-Fragmentation Equilibrium for Charged Dust: Abundance of Submicron Grains Increases Dramatically in Protoplanetary Disks

TL;DR

This study models how electrostatic charges and fragmentation processes in protoplanetary disks significantly increase the abundance of tiny sub-micron dust grains, affecting disk evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical model combining electrostatic and fragmentation effects on dust coagulation, revealing enhanced small grain populations in protoplanetary disks.

Findings

Sub-micron grain abundance increases by several orders of magnitude.

Fragmentation can destroy macroscopic grains under certain conditions.

Electrostatic repulsion influences dust growth and fragmentation balance.

Abstract

Dust coagulation in protoplanetary disks is not straightforward and is subject to several slow-down mechanisms, such as bouncing, fragmentation and radial drift to the star. Furthermore, dust grains in UV-shielded disk regions are negatively charged due to collisions with the surrounding electrons and ions, which leads to their electrostatic repulsion. For typical disk conditions, the relative velocities between micron-size grains are small and their collisions are strongly affected by the repulsion. On the other hand, collisions between pebble-size grains can be too energetic, leading to grain fragmentation. The aim of the present paper is to study a combined effect of the electrostatic and fragmentation barriers on dust evolution. We numerically solve the Smoluchowski coagulation-fragmentation equation for grains whose charging occurs under conditions typical for the inner disk regions, where thermal ionization operates. We find that dust fragmentation efficiently resupplies the population of small grains under the electrostatic barrier. As a result, the equilibrium abundance of sub-micron grains is enhanced by several orders of magnitude compared to the case of neutral dust. For some conditions with fragmentation velocities $\sim 1$ m s$^{-1}$, macroscopic grains are completely destroyed.