Optical properties of the carbon dust grains in the envelopes around asymptotic giant branch stars

Abstract

We have investigated the optical properties of the carbon dust grains in the envelopes around carbon-rich asymptotic giant branch stars, paying close attention to the infrared observations of the stars and the laboratory-measured optical data of the candidate dust grain materials. We have compared the radiative transfer model results with the observed spectral energy distributions of the stars including IRAS Point Source Catalog and IRAS Low Resolution Spectrograph data. We have deduced an opacity function of amorphous carbon dust grains from model fitting with infrared carbon stars. From the opacity function, we have derived the optical constants of the AMC grains. The optical constants satisfy the Kramers-Kronig relation and produce the opacity function that fits the observations of infrared carbon stars better than previous works in the wide wavelength range 1-1000 μm. We have used simple mixtures of the AMC and silicon carbide grains for modelling. We have compared the contributions that AMC and SiC grains make to the opacity for the cases of simple mixtures of them and spherical core-mantle type grains consisting of a SiC core and an AMC mantle.