Aims. The dust-forming population of AGB stars and their input to the interstellar dust budget of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) are studied with evolutionary dust models with the main goals (1) to ...investigate how the amount and composition of dust from AGB stars vary over the galactic history; (2) to characterise the mass and metallicity distribution of the present population of AGB stars; (3) to quantify the contribution of AGB stars of different mass and metallicity to the present stardust population in the interstellar medium (ISM). Methods. We used models of the stardust lifecycle in the ISM developed and tested for the solar neighbourhood. The first global spatially resolved reconstruction of the star formation history of the LMC from the Magellanic Clouds Photometric Survey was employed to calculate the stellar populations in the LMC. Results. The dust input from AGB stars is dominated by carbon grains from stars with masses ≲4 M⊙ almost during the entire history of the LMC. The production of silicate, silicon carbide, and iron dust is delayed until the ISM is enriched to about half the present metallicity in the LMC. For the first time, theoretically calculated dust production rates of AGB stars are compared with those derived from infrared observations of AGB stars for the entire galaxy. We find good agreement within scatter of various observational estimates. We show that the majority of silicate and iron grains in the present stardust population originate from a small population of intermediate-mass stars consisting of only ≲4% of the total number of stars, whereas in the solar neighbourhood they originate from low-mass stars. With models of the lifecycle of stardust grains in the ISM we confirm the strong discrepancy between dust input from stars and the existing interstellar dust mass in the LMC reported previously.
Context. This is the fourth paper in a series showing the results of planet population synthesis calculations. In Paper I, we presented our methods. In Paper II, we compared the synthetic and the ...observed planetary population statistically. Paper III addressed the influences of the stellar mass on the population.Aims. Our goal in this fourth paper is to systematically study the effects of important disk properties, namely disk metallicity, mass, and lifetime on fundamental properties of planets like mass and semimajor axis.Methods. For a large number of protoplanetary disks that have properties following distributions derived from observations, we calculated a population of planets with our formation model. The model is based on the classical core accretion paradigm but self-consistently includes planet migration and disk evolution.Results. We find a very large number of correlations. Regarding the planetary initial mass function, metallicity, Mdisk, and τdisk play different roles. For high metallicities, giant planets are more frequent. For high Mdisk, giant planets are more massive. For long τdisk, giant planets are both more frequent and massive. At low metallicities, very massive giant planets cannot form, but otherwise giant planet mass and metallicity are nearly uncorrelated. In contrast, (maximum) planet masses and disk gas masses are correlated. The formation of giant planets is possible for initial planetesimal surface densities ΣS of at least 6 g/cm2 at 5.2 AU. The best spot for giant planet formation is at ~5 AU. In- and outside this distance, higher ΣS are necessary. Low metallicities can be compensated for by high Mdisk, and vice versa, but not ad infinitum. At low metallicities, giant planets only form outside the ice line, while giant planet formation occurs throughout the disk at high metallicities. The extent of migration increases with Mdisk and τdisk and usually decreases with metallicity. No clear correlation of metallicity and the semimajor axis distribution of giant planets exists because in low-metallicity disks, planets start farther out, but migrate more, while the contrary applies to high metallicities. The final semimajor axis distribution contains an imprint of the ice line. Close-in low mass planets have a lower mean metallicity than hot Jupiters. The frequency of giant planets varies approximately as Mdisk1.2 and τdisk2.Conclusions. The properties of protoplanetary disks – the initial and boundary conditions for planet formation – are decisive for the properties of planets, and leave many imprints on the population.
Stars orbiting the compact radio source Sgr A* in the Galactic Center serve as precision probes of the gravitational field around the closest massive black hole. In addition to adaptive ...optics-assisted astrometry (with NACO/VLT) and spectroscopy (with SINFONI/VLT, NIRC2/Keck and GNIRS/Gemini) over three decades, we have obtained 30–100 μas astrometry since 2017 with the four-telescope interferometric beam combiner GRAVITY/VLTI, capable of reaching a sensitivity of
m
K
= 20 when combining data from one night. We present the simultaneous detection of several stars within the diffraction limit of a single telescope, illustrating the power of interferometry in the field. The new data for the stars S2, S29, S38, and S55 yield significant accelerations between March and July 2021, as these stars pass the pericenters of their orbits between 2018 and 2023. This allows for a high-precision determination of the gravitational potential around Sgr A*. Our data are in excellent agreement with general relativity orbits around a single central point mass,
M
•
= 4.30 × 10
6
M
⊙
, with a precision of about ±0.25%. We improve the significance of our detection of the Schwarzschild precession in the S2 orbit to 7
σ
. Assuming plausible density profiles, the extended mass component inside the S2 apocenter (≈0.23″ or 2.4 × 10
4
R
S
) must be ≲3000
M
⊙
(1
σ
), or ≲0.1% of
M
•
. Adding the enclosed mass determinations from 13 stars orbiting Sgr A* at larger radii, the innermost radius at which the excess mass beyond Sgr A* is tentatively seen is
r
≈ 2.5″ ≥ 10× the apocenter of S2. This is in full harmony with the stellar mass distribution (including stellar-mass black holes) obtained from the spatially resolved luminosity function.
Star formation in molecular clouds is intimately linked to their internal mass distribution. We present an unprecedentedly detailed analysis of the column density structure of a high-mass, ...filamentary molecular cloud, namely IRDC G11.11-0.12 (G11). We use two novel column density mapping techniques: high-resolution (FWHM = 2″, or ~0.035 pc) dust extinction mapping in near- and mid-infrared, and dust emission mapping with the Herschel satellite. These two completely independent techniques yield a strikingly good agreement, highlighting their complementarity and robustness. We first analyze the dense gas mass fraction and linear mass density of G11. We show that G11 has a top heavy mass distribution and has a linear mass density (Ml ~ 600 M⊙ pc-1) that greatly exceeds the critical value of a self-gravitating, non-turbulent cylinder. These properties make G11 analogous to the Orion A cloud, despite its low star-forming activity. This suggests that the amount of dense gas in molecular clouds is more closely connected to environmental parameters or global processes than to the star-forming efficiency of the cloud. We then examine hierarchical fragmentation in G11 over a wide range of size-scales and densities. We show that at scales 0.5 pc ≳ l ≳ 8 pc, the fragmentation of G11 is in agreement with that of a self-gravitating cylinder. At scales smaller than l ≲ 0.5 pc, the results agree better with spherical Jeans’ fragmentation. One possible explanation for the change in fragmentation characteristics is the size-scale-dependent collapse time-scale that results from the finite size of real molecular clouds: at scales l ≲ 0.5 pc, fragmentation becomes sufficiently rapid to be unaffected by global instabilities.
Laboratory studies play a crucial role in understanding the chemical nature of the interstellar medium (ISM), but the disconnect between experimental timescales and the timescales of reactions in ...space can make a direct comparison between observations, laboratory, and model results difficult. Here we study the survival of reactive fragments of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) coronene, where individual C atoms have been knocked out of the molecules in hard collisions with He atoms at stellar wind and supernova shockwave velocities. Ionic fragments are stored in the DESIREE cryogenic ion-beam storage ring where we investigate their decay for up to one second. After 10 ms the initially hot stored ions have cooled enough so that spontaneous dissociation no longer takes place at a measurable rate; a majority of the fragments remain intact and will continue to do so indefinitely in isolation. Our findings show that defective PAHs formed in energetic collisions with heavy particles may survive at thermal equilibrium in the interstellar medium indefinitely, and could play an important role in the chemistry in there, due to their increased reactivity compared to intact or photo-fragmented PAHs.
After decades of searching, astronomers have recently identified specific Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in space. Remarkably, the observed abundance of cyanonaphthalene (CNN, C
H
CN) in the ...Taurus Molecular Cloud (TMC-1) is six orders of magnitude higher than expected from astrophysical modeling. Here, we report unimolecular dissociation and radiative cooling rate coefficients of the 1-CNN isomer in its cationic form. These results are based on measurements of the time-dependent neutral product emission rate and kinetic energy release distributions produced from an ensemble of internally excited 1-CNN
studied in an environment similar to that in interstellar clouds. We find that Recurrent Fluorescence - radiative relaxation via thermally populated electronic excited states - efficiently stabilizes 1-CNN
, owing to a large enhancement of the electronic transition probability by vibronic coupling. Our results help explain the anomalous abundance of CNN in TMC-1 and challenge the widely accepted picture of rapid destruction of small PAHs in space.
The GRAVITY instrument on the ESO VLTI pioneers the field of high-precision near-infrared interferometry by providing astrometry at the 10−100
μ
as level. Measurements at this high precision ...crucially depend on the control of systematic effects. We investigate how aberrations introduced by small optical imperfections along the path from the telescope to the detector affect the astrometry. We develop an analytical model that describes the effect of these aberrations on the measurement of complex visibilities. Our formalism accounts for pupil-plane and focal-plane aberrations, as well as for the interplay between static and turbulent aberrations, and it successfully reproduces calibration measurements of a binary star. The Galactic Center observations with GRAVITY in 2017 and 2018, when both Sgr A* and the star S2 were targeted in a single fiber pointing, are affected by these aberrations at a level lower than 0.5 mas. Removal of these effects brings the measurement in harmony with the dual-beam observations of 2019 and 2020, which are not affected by these aberrations. This also resolves the small systematic discrepancies between the derived distance
R
0
to the Galactic Center that were reported previously.
We examine the physical parameters that affect the accumulation of gas in molecular clouds to high column densities where the formation of stars takes place. In particular, we analyze the dense gas ...mass fraction (DGMF) in a set of self-gravitating, isothermal, magnetohydrodynamic turbulence simulations that include sink particles to model star formation. We find that the simulations predict close to exponential DGMFs over the column density range N(H2) = 3−25 × 1021 cm-2 that can be easily probed via, e.g., dust extinction measurements. The exponential slopes correlate with the type of turbulence driving and also with the star formation efficiency. They are almost uncorrelated with the sonic Mach number and magnetic-field strength. The slopes at early stages of cloud evolution are steeper than at the later stages. A comparison of these predictions with observations shows that only simulations with relatively noncompressive driving (b ≲ 0.4) agree with the DGMFs of nearby molecular clouds. Massive infrared dark clouds can show DGMFs that agree with more compressive driving. The DGMFs of molecular clouds can be significantly affected by how compressive the turbulence is on average. Variations in the level of compression can cause scatter to the DGMF slopes, and some variation is indeed necessary to explain the spread of the observed DGMF slopes. The observed DGMF slopes can also be affected by the clouds’ star formation activities and statistical cloud-to-cloud variations.
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