Mechanical alignment of suprathermal paramagnetic cosmic-dust granules: the cross-section mechanism

Abstract

We develop a comprehensive quantitative description of the cross-section mechanism discovered several years ago by Lazarian. This is one of the processes that determine grain orientation in clouds of suprathermal cosmic dust. The cross-section mechanism manifests itself when an ensemble of suprathermal paramagnetic granules is placed in a magnetic field and is subject to ultrasonic gas bombardment. The mechanism yields dust alignment whose efficiency depends upon two factors: the geometric shape of the granules, and the angle between the magnetic line and the gas flow. We calculate the quantitative measure of this alignment, and study its dependence upon the said factors. It turns out that, irrelevant of the grain shape, the action of a flux does not lead to alignment if = arccos (1/3).