A broadband study of galactic dust emission

Abstract

We have combined infrared data with H_I, H_2, and H_II surveys to spatially decompose the observed dust emission into components associated with different phases of the gas. An inversion technique is applied. For the decomposition, we use the IRAS 60 and 100 μm bands, the DIRBE 140 and 240 μm bands, as well as Archeops 850 and 2096 μm wavelengths. In addition, we apply the decomposition to all five WMAP bands. We obtain longitude and latitude profiles for each wavelength and for each gas component in carefully selected Galactic radius bins. We also derive emissivity coefficients for dust in atomic, molecular, and ionized gas in each of the bins. The H_I emissivity appears to decrease with increasing Galactic radius indicating that dust associated with atomic gas is heated by the ambient interstellar radiation field (ISRF). By contrast, we find evidence that dust mixed with molecular clouds is significantly heated by O/B stars still embedded in their progenitor clouds. By assuming a modified blackbody with emissivity law λ^(−1.5), we also derive the radial distribution of temperature for each phase of the gas. All of the WMAP bands except W appear to be dominated by emission from something other than normal dust, most likely a mixture of thermal bremstrahlung from diffuse ionized gas, synchrotron emission, and spinning dust. Furthermore, we find indications of an emissivity excess at long wavelengths (λ ≥ 850 μm) in the outer Galaxy (R > 8.9 kpc). This suggests either the existence of a very cold dust component in the outer Galaxy or a temperature dependence of the spectral emissivity index. Finally, it is shown that ~80% of the total FIR luminosity is produced by dust associated with atomic hydrogen, in agreement with earlier findings. The work presented here has been carried out as part of the development of analysis tools for the planned European Space Agency (ESA) Planck mission.

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