This is the astro-ph blog of the Theoretical Modelling of Cosmic Structures group (TMoX) at the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. We are an independent Max-Planck Research Group focusing on the various aspects in the formation and evolution of galaxies. Part of our focus is on the formation and evolution of early-type galaxies, super-massive black holes, the formation of the first structures in the universe and the enrichment history of the Universe. We are theoreticians using analytic modelling as well as numerical simulations in our work.

The CosmologyCake blog is dedicated to the discussion of research papers and current developments. We will regularly post interesting papers and comment on them. Feel free to leave your comments as well. We encourage authors of discussed papers to post replies if they wish to. Our aim is to provide a platform to discuss recent astro-ph papers within a wider audience. Please feel free to send papers you would like to be discussed to us at tmoxgroup@googlemail.com.

1 June 2011

On the effects of microphysical grain properties on the yields of carbonaceous dust from type II SNe


http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.4631
The paper studies the carbonaceous dust yields and properties from SN II, by theoretically exploring the parameter space {shape, sticking coefficient}.
The authors do not attempt to explain the discrepancies of some order of magnitude with the observed data, but try to constrain the effects of the different model parameters (based on nucleation theory).
They find that grain condensation times and grain size distributions are affected by the choice of different parameters, and, e.g.,
1. - larger sticking coefficients imply larger grains;
2. - more spherical grains have larger dimensions;
3. - larger sticking coefficient imply shorter condensation times (grains form earlier).
However, the total amount of dust prodiced (i.e. the dust yield) is quite independent from them.