COMPUTING THE DUST DISTRIBUTION IN THE BOW SHOCK OF A FAST-MOVING, EVOLVED STAR
- Centre for Plasma Astrophysics, K. U. Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200B, Heverlee, B-3001 (Belgium)
- Institute of Astronomy, K. U. Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, Heverlee, B-3001 (Belgium)
We study the hydrodynamical behavior occurring in the turbulent interaction zone of a fast-moving red supergiant star, where the circumstellar and interstellar material collide. In this wind-interstellar-medium collision, the familiar bow shock, contact discontinuity, and wind termination shock morphology form, with localized instability development. Our model includes a detailed treatment of dust grains in the stellar wind and takes into account the drag forces between dust and gas. The dust is treated as pressureless gas components binned per grain size, for which we use 10 representative grain size bins. Our simulations allow us to deduce how dust grains of varying sizes become distributed throughout the circumstellar medium. We show that smaller dust grains (radius <0.045 {mu}m) tend to be strongly bound to the gas and therefore follow the gas density distribution closely, with intricate fine structure due to essentially hydrodynamical instabilities at the wind-related contact discontinuity. Larger grains which are more resistant to drag forces are shown to have their own unique dust distribution, with progressive deviations from the gas morphology. Specifically, small dust grains stay entirely within the zone bound by shocked wind material. The large grains are capable of leaving the shocked wind layer and can penetrate into the shocked or even unshocked interstellar medium. Depending on how the number of dust grains varies with grain size, this should leave a clear imprint in infrared observations of bow shocks of red supergiants and other evolved stars.
- OSTI ID:
- 21562604
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 734, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/734/2/L26; ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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