Institution: | aDark Cosmology Center, Juliane Maries Vej 30, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark bNORDITA, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark cAstrophysikalisches Institut, Schillergässchen 2-3, D-07745 Jena, Germany dInstitut für Astronomie, Türkenschanzstraße 17, A-1180 Wien, Austria eAstronomical Institute Anton Pannekoek, University of Amsterdam, Kruislaan 403, NL-1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
Abstract: | Particle shape and aggregation have a strong influence on the spectral profiles of infrared phonon bands of solid dust grains. Calculating these effects is difficult due to the often extreme refractive index values in these bands. In this paper, we use the discrete dipole approximation (DDA) and the T-matrix method to compute the absorption band profiles for simple clusters of touching spherical grains. We invest reasonable amounts of computation time in order to reach high dipole grid resolutions and take high multipolar orders into account, respectively. The infrared phonon bands of three different refractory materials of astrophysical relevance are considered—silicon carbide, wustite and silicon dioxide. We demonstrate that even though these materials display a range of material properties and therefore different strengths of the surface resonances, a complete convergence is obtained with none of the approaches. For the DDA, we find a strong dependence of the calculated band profiles on the exact dipole distribution within the aggregates, especially in the vicinity of the contact points between their spherical constituents. By applying a recently developed method to separate the material optical constants from the geometrical parameters in the DDA approach, we are able to demonstrate that the most critical material properties are those where the real part of the refractive index is much smaller than unity. |