Ultraviolet Radiation inside Interstellar Grain Aggregates. I. The Density of Radiation

We study the distribution of energy density inside dust grain aggregates through an approach based on the multipole expansion of the electromagnetic fields. A significant fraction of the energy of the impinging wave is found throughout the interiors of grains. Implications for extraterrestrial prebiotic chemistry are discussed.

[1]  M. Schnaiter,et al.  Coagulation as Unifying Element for Interstellar Polarization , 2002 .

[2]  Warren Belisle,et al.  Carbonaceous meteorites as a source of sugar-related organic compounds for the early Earth , 2001, Nature.

[3]  Philip J. Wyatt,et al.  Scattering of Electromagnetic Plane Waves from Inhomogeneous Spherically Symmetric Objects , 1962 .

[4]  Scott A. Sandford,et al.  Racemic amino acids from the ultraviolet photolysis of interstellar ice analogues , 2002, Nature.

[5]  P. Denti,et al.  Beyond Mie Theory: The Transition Matrix Approach in Interstellar Dust Modeling , 2001 .

[6]  S. Miller A production of amino acids under possible primitive earth conditions. , 1953, Science.

[7]  A. Brack,et al.  Amino acids from ultraviolet irradiation of interstellar ice analogues , 2002, Nature.

[8]  Rosalba Saija,et al.  Scattering from Model Nonspherical Particles: Theory and Applications to Environmental Physics , 2003 .

[9]  David A. Williams,et al.  Excess infrared emission from large interstellar carbon grains , 1988 .

[10]  Akira Ishimaru,et al.  Wave propagation and scattering in random media , 1997 .

[11]  S. Pizzarello,et al.  Enantiomeric Excesses in Meteoritic Amino Acids , 1997, Science.

[12]  P. Denti,et al.  An addition theorem for vector Helmholtz harmonics , 1980 .

[13]  Alexander G. G. M. Tielens,et al.  Interstellar Ice: The Infrared Space Observatory Legacy , 2004 .

[14]  J. Vesecky,et al.  Wave propagation and scattering. , 1989 .

[15]  E. Feigelson,et al.  High-Energy Processes in Young Stellar Objects , 1999 .

[16]  D. Brownlee,et al.  An infrared spectral match between GEMS and interstellar grains. , 1999, Science.

[17]  Jeremy Bailey,et al.  Astronomical Sources of Circularly Polarized Light and the Origin of Homochirality , 2001, Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere.

[18]  Arianna Giusto,et al.  Optical Properties of Composite Interstellar Grains: A Morphological Analysis , 2004 .

[19]  W. Duley Chemistry in grain aggregates: a source of complex molecules? , 2002 .

[20]  K. Suh Optical properties of the silicate dust grains in the envelopes around asymptotic giant branch stars , 1999 .

[21]  S. Warren,et al.  Optical constants of ice from the ultraviolet to the microwave. , 1984, Applied optics.

[22]  E. Anders,et al.  Meteorites and the Early Solar System , 1971 .

[23]  S. Pizzarello,et al.  Unusual stable isotope ratios in amino acid and carboxylic acid extracts from the Murchison meteorite , 1987, Nature.

[24]  M. E. Rose Elementary Theory of Angular Momentum , 1957 .

[25]  P. Denti,et al.  Extinction coefficients for a random dispersion of small stratified spheres and a random dispersion of their binary aggregates , 1987 .

[26]  D. A. Dunnett Classical Electrodynamics , 2020, Nature.