On the grain-sized distribution of turbulent dust growth

Abstract

ABSTRACT It has recently been shown that turbulence in the interstellar medium can significantly accelerate the growth of dust grains by accretion of molecules, but the turbulent gas density distribution also plays a crucial role in shaping the grain-sized distribution (GSD). The growth velocity, i.e. the rate of change of the mean grain radius, is proportional to the local gas density if the growth species (molecules) are well mixed in the gas. As a consequence, grain growth happens at vastly different rates in different locations, since the gas density distribution of the interstellar medium (ISM) shows a considerable variance. Here, it is shown that GSD rapidly becomes a reflection of the gas density distribution, irrespective of the shape of the initial GSD. This result is obtained by modelling ISM turbulence as a Markov process, which in the special case of an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process leads to a lognormal gas density distribution, consistent with numerical simulations of isothermal compressible turbulence. This yields an approximately lognormal GSD; the sizes of dust grains in cold ISM clouds may thus not follow the commonly adopted power-law GSD with index −3.5 but corroborate the use of a lognormal GSD for large grains, suggested by several studies. It is also concluded that the very wide range of gas densities obtained in the high Mach-number turbulence of molecular clouds must allow formation of a tail of very large grains reaching radii of several microns.