Publication Date:
2014-02-26
Description:
In this paper, first solutions of the dust moment equations developed in [{\sl Woitke & Helling 2002}] for the description of dust formation and precipitation in brown dwarf and giant gas planet atmospheres are presented. We consider the special case of a static brown dwarf atmosphere, where dust particles continuously nucleate from the gas phase, grow by the accretion of molecules, settle gravitationally and re-evaporate thermally. Applying a kinetic description of the relevant microphysical and chemical processes for TiO$_2$-grains, the model makes predictions about the large-scale stratification of dust in the atmosphere, the depletion of molecules from the gas phase, the supersaturation of the gas in the atmosphere as well as the mean size and the mass fraction of dust grains as function of depth. Our results suggest that the nucleation occu in the upper atmosphere where the gas is cool, strongly depleted, but nevertheless highly supersaturated ($S\!\gg\!1$). These particles settle gravitationally and populate the warmer layers below, where the in-situ formation (nucleation) is ineffective or even not possible. During their descent, the particles grow up to radii $\approx\!0.3\,\mu{\rm m}\,...\,150\,\mu{\rm m}$, depending gas around the cloud base. The particles finally sink into layers which are sufficiently hot to cause their thermal evaporation. Hence, an effective transport mechanism for condensable elements exi considered solid/liquid material. In the stationary case studied here, this downward directed element transport by precipitating dust grains is balanced by an upward directed flux of condensable elements from the deep interior of the star via convective mixing (no dust without mixing). We find a self-regulation mechanism which leads to an approximate phase equilibrium ($S\!\approx\!1$) around the cloud base. The mass fraction of dust present in the atmosphere results be to approximately given by the mass fraction of condensable elements in the gas being mixed up.
Keywords:
ddc:000
Language:
English
Type:
reportzib
,
doc-type:preprint
Format:
application/postscript
Format:
application/pdf
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