Paper detail

Alignment and rotational disruption of dust

We reveal a deep connection between alignment of dust grains by RAdiative torques (RATs) and MEchanical Torques (METs) and rotational disruption of grains introduced by Hoang et al. (2019). The disruption of grains happens if they have attractor points corresponding to high angular momentum (high-J). We introduce {\it fast disruption} for grains that are directly driven to the high-J attractor on a timescale of spin-up, and {\it slow disruption} for grains that are first moved to the low-J attractor and gradually transported to the high-J attractor by gas collisions. The enhancement of grain magnetic susceptibility via iron inclusions expands the parameter space for high-J attractors and increases percentage of grains experiencing the disruption. The increase in the magnitude of RATs or METs can increase the efficiency of fast disruption, but counter-intuitively, decreases the effect of slow disruption by forcing grains towards low-J attractors, whereas the increase in gas density accelerates disruption by faster transporting grains to the high-J attractor. We also show that disruption induced by RATs and METs depends on the angle between the magnetic field and the anisotropic flow. We find that pinwheel torques can increase the efficiency of {\it fast disruption} but may decrease the efficiency of {\it slow disruption} by delaying the transport of grains from the low-J to high-J attractors via gas collisions. The selective nature of the rotational disruption opens a possibility of observational testing of grain composition as well as physical processes of grain alignment.